


Thou has loved the lion

by ju4jen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst Dean Winchester, Babylonian, Gilgamesh - Freeform, Ishtar - Freeform, M/M, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-24
Updated: 2011-07-24
Packaged: 2017-10-21 17:40:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/227841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ju4jen/pseuds/ju4jen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean claims to have lost Sam, his brother.  And Bobby is concerned because, after all Dean has gone through saving the world so many times singlehandedly, he finally thinks his surrogate son has gone mad.  For real… because WTF?  Who is this Sam that Dean is banging on about?</p><p>A story about love - the importance of holding onto what you believe despite all the odds and despite whatever anyone else is telling you, about having the courage to accept that love comes in many guises and how, sometimes, just sometimes, you might have to give up everything, absolutely everything, in order to get your love back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thou has loved the lion

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for spn-j2 bigbang 2011 and was brought to you by the most incredible magicians…  
> Five days before posting it became very evident that my original artist was MIA (many kindly thoughts to her and lots of hope that all is well). However the lovely Wendy (mod at the Big Bang) coolly and calmly matched me up with a pinch hitter and suddenly my story was being given colour and elegance and passion through the amazing art work of thru terry’s eyes. I owe her mega amounts but feel so blessed to have been rescued in such an awesome way. The artwork puts my rather humble story to shame. Thank you so much for your enthusiasm and hard work with so little time. I hope I can learn how to link the art to this post because it needs to be seen, and makes the fic so much more than it is....
> 
> This was beta’d by januarygirl64. There are bound to be mistakes but these are all my fault. However, januarygirl64 had to read this story in all its different incarnations, put up with me talking about it endlessly, bolstering my self-esteem as I kept asking “are you sure its alright?” and then finally reading it through once again for spelling and grammar. She has supported me above and beyond… Thank you.
> 
> As a raging technophobe and relative noobie on LJ, my main concern was how on earth I was going to put it all together and ensure it was posted and legible on the right date. I was rescued (I do need rescuing a lot, don’t I?) by Terry's friend Laura and I can’t thank her enough for stepping in with such short notice to perform her particular brand of magic.
> 
> Finally thanks to wendy and highwaywoman for organising the whole shebang. It’s been a lot of fun and without you… etc etc

****

## **Thou Shalt Love the Lion**

 **Chapter One**

One minute Sam was there – shoulder bumping against his in that comforting, reassuring way – and the next he was gone.

Dean had stopped suddenly, and Sam, not noticing and walking way too close as normal, had bumped straight into him. In fact Dean had just seen such a malevolent stare from an old lady sitting in the window of the diner they were heading towards, that he had been somewhat taken aback. As far as he was aware he had yet to have an opportunity to piss off this particular old crone but the look had been so hard and so pointedly directed at him, that his step had faltered. And then, just as Sam brushed into his shoulder, he had lost him.

Lady Bracknell said that to lose one parent is unfortunate, to lose two was carelessness. Although Dean Winchester had no idea who Lady Bracknell was and only a vague notion of the past existence of Oscar Wilde, he was beginning to feel the vehement truth of this statement - although it followed more along the lines of losing Sammy once was unfortunate, twice rather tragic but a third time was somehow just beyond the pale, and, I mean, what the fuck? But the reality was staring him the face. Sammy was just not there.

After all that he had seen and experienced, it is possible to assume that Dean would take this disappearance in his stride. After all he had spent his whole life witnessing strange phenomena including numerous moments of Sam Being In Peril, and he had witnessed his brother dying more than once already. However, the panic which rose up from his gut was swift and sharp and overwhelming. Because this – his anxiety, his fear - would never get old for him no matter how many angels and demons they had faced down together.

“Sam!” he called fiercely, looking about him on the busy street. There were plenty of people but Sam was a huge freak of a human and was always easy to spot. Maybe he had bent to tie a shoe lace or popped into the book shop?  
“Sam!” Dean shouted again, raising some curious glances from the passerbys but no real interest. Dean had felt it – the sudden absence of what was really a hulking great wall of a brother. One moment brushing against his arm and then nothing. And it had nothing to do with a untied lace or an interesting read.

“Sammy?” His voice hitched a little, because the hand of fear and panic had started to close about his throat, now it had finished pulverising his stomach and lungs.

“Son of ....” his voice now barely managing more than a whisper.

“I’m gonna kill him!”

***

Even though he knew, without doubt, that Sam had disappeared, Dean still looked – action becoming a priority so he didn’t have the chance to consider how he felt about this. He retraced their steps up the main street back to the Impala dodging the Christmas shoppers, eyes raised above their heads desperate for a sight of shaggy, overlong hair. Then he paced circuits around all the stores lining the route back that he knew Sam would have some interest in and into which he could have been tempted. Each aisle and each corner investigated again and then once more in case, miraculously and implausibly, Sam had just been obscured by the low shelves or the other shoppers. Then he paced circuits in the other ones, the unlikely ones, allowing himself only a brief flicker of grim amusement when considering the possibility that his brother had some reason to visit Pretty Lily’s Lingerie Emporium. He was, after all, not much more than a girl anyway…

Finally he started to question people. The old man sat on the bench in front of the tobacconists. The teens laughing in the entrance of the darkened alleyway. The harassed mother with the pushchair and a wailing toddler. They all shrugged and he knew it was hopeless because these were random people and why the hell would they have noticed Sam?

As soon as he had retraced their steps all the way back to the diner, he stopped and took a deep breath. Come on Dean, he chastised himself angrily, get a grip. Think. And then he noticed the old lady sitting in the window of the diner – the one who had creeped him out earlier by staring at him hard. She had been looking right at them when Sam had vanished. She was still there, a cup of something shaking in her hand. And she was still staring.

A moment later, he was sliding into a chair opposite her.

***

“What the fuck?” he cried too loudly, drawing attention to their table.

“I didn’t see a brother,” she repeated. Her eyes, black , intense, still looking at Dean as if she didn’t like him very much, making Dean feel a little nauseous and, OK, a little outraged. Crazy old broad.

“You can’t have missed him! He’s like way tall – needing a long overdue haircut...” Dean waved a hand abstractly above his head. “Lady, you were looking right at us!” He wanted to give her more details, but, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what the hell Sam had been wearing that morning. She tipped her head to one side, a flash of anger almost scarlet in her eyes and her lips pursing tight closed. Dean’s raised, slighter higher than normal tones and flailing hands were looking threatening and, even through his panic, he could sense he was outstaying his welcome. A couple of other customers, built like brick shithouses, were showing more interest in the scene than Dean really felt was good for his health.

“I saw you. Swaggering and arrogant. Walking as if the world owed you a favour,” she finally answered in a voice that was surprisingly strong and dripping with enmity. Dean recoiled, but a wrinkled hand with long, yellowed nails like claws, reached out suddenly and grabbed his wrist viciously.

“There was no brother,” she hissed confidently. “You have no brother!”

A large hand pulled him up from the table. Finally the good citizens had stepped in to save the bird-like grandmother from the loud mouthed yob. Dean was propelled towards the door accompanied by a tirade about fucked up cunts who prey on poor little old ladies and threats about how his face would feel smashed against fists.

Dean felt this was a little unfair, as he hadn’t actually done or said anything to the mad and vitriolic bitch to deserve this treatment, and he wanted to point out that he was well acquainted with the feeling of hard hands breaking his nose, and that anyway he would be able to take them both on and leaving them bleeding. Probably. He adjusted his thoughts as he glared at his assailants, both as tall as Sam and twice as wide, if that were at all possible. However, he had more important things to do, so for once in his life, Dean kept his mouth closed.

***

The sales clerk in the Gas N’ Save hadn’t noticed Sam either. This was despite serving the said missing brother only an hour or so earlier. Dean knew this because the slime ball had made some snarky comment about not serving giants. In fact, how Sam managed to avoid slugging the fucker was a complete mystery to Dean. But Sam had smiled that tight not real smile and handed over the cash without a word.

Now, however, the moron was simply staring in confusion at Dean’s questions simply repeating that he remembered Dean, who had bought a paper and some candy, but only Dean. If Dean had been pedantic, he would have pointed out that, although he was of a somewhat manly height which was nothing to be ashamed of, he was far from being the monstrosity that Sam was and so how was it possible that he be mistaken for him. But he resisted, largely because any response failed him when the clerk had reiterated that Dean had been alone.

When Dean finally did find his words they were not pleasant, a little abusive, and full of cussing of an extreme nature. The sales clerk threatened to call the police.

***

The motel owner was a little more forceful and had produced a shotgun. Dean had booked into the room two days ago. No, he hadn’t seen his brother. He had been alone.

“But he was the one who checked in!” Dean’s voice was ragged and he was struggling to find oxygen, but the man gave him a WTF look, that blatantly and audibly labelled him as a some weirdo high on something or another. This was deliberate provocation to Dean, already wound up tight, resulting in Dean taking some actions that led to a face off with the barrel of the aforementioned gun. He quietened.

“There is no crazy conspiracy, man,” the skeevy motel owner exclaimed. “This town is not full of cannibalistic, sacrificing devil worshippers. We haven’t kidnapped your brother to meet our own nefarious ends. Now Just take a step back. What ever it is you’re on, dude – sleep it off...” Dean retreated.

***

It was the single queen, and the phone call from Bobby that finally broke Dean.  
Feeling lucky that he hadn’t been thrown out of the motel altogether, he opened to door to their room and then just stared. He looked at the key fob and double checked the room number. The Impala was still parked, gleaming, right outside. Then he swallowed hard and entered. He shot searching looks around the room.  
One duffle.

One toothbrush.

No lap top.

One queen.

Hand shaking so hard that he had to restart several times, he finally managed to punch the numbers into his cell phone.

“Jesus, Bobby... just answer already,” he chewed out as he paced the floor.

“Sam’s missing,” he started when he heard the click of the pick up but before Bobby had a chance to speak. “Must be a demon... or a god... or one of those goddam locals... but one minute he was there.... then gone.... we were just going out to get something to eat... and he’s gone.... no-one can even remember seeing him... or they are just saying that... his stuff is gone... they must have taken it...”

“Dean!” Bobby tried interrupting.

“There was this evil witch in the diner... I looked every where... he just vanished...”

“Dean! Just shuddup willya? What the hell is going on?”

“It’s Sam, Bobby.” Dean was just coherent enough to realise that Bobby would be rolling his eyes at this point. After all, it always was about Sam, wasn’t it? But he just continued on... “The motel guy says I checked in, but it was Sam ... no-one remembers him...”

“Dean. Just take some deep breaths.”

“You gotta come out here, Bobby. I can’t... losing him... I just can’t... I can’t lose him again... I... Bobby? Sam is... “ Dean finally could feel the panic he had been fighting all morning begin to subsume him.

“Dean?” Bobby asked him quietly when finally the torrent of words had subsided. “Who the hell is Sam?”

And Dean shattered into a million pieces.

 

 **Chapter Two**

For days, Sam had been jittery. In fact, he’d seemed a little out of it, phased out, since Death had returned his soul. Dean could understand this after all the kid had gone through. Not just the trip to hell and the returning but realising what he had been without his soul, how he had treated Dean, how he had nearly killed Bobby. But things had calmed down a little – and the contentment and satisfaction which had begun to settle over Dean had helped him, blanketing any concerns that he might have regarding Sam’s fidgets and daydreams. He ignored the long pensive silences, and the intense stares.

But just recently Sam had upped the edginess exponentially, frequently starting to say something then stopping without having formed a whole word. He’d run his hands nervously through his mane of hair. He’d constantly fiddled with this little, battered black box. It was something he’d been carrying around with him since Death had re-souled him, tossing it absently during their long road trips or turning it over and over in his pockets. Sam obviously thought Dean wasn’t paying attention but, huh, as if... Dean always paid attention. Particularly when it came to his little brother. The box was capturing Sam’s attention so Dean watched and made mental notes, but allowed his own happiness at having his brother back to soothe any anxieties he might have.

The presence of this tiny box, though, plagued Dean and drove him mad. It wasn’t just the fidgeting, and the distraction. No, what was really provoking him was his curiosity. What the hell was this box? What was in it? Finally, in an unusual moment of carelessness, Sam had left it on the table while he’d gone to take a piss. Dean fought a hard and vicious battle with himself and did not succumb to sneaking a peak.

Sam had paled on his return. The box was grabbed quickly and shoved into his jean’s pocket. He glared accusingly at Dean but didn’t say anything. Dean felt inordinately proud of his awesome self control.

“What?” Dean asked, an eyebrow cocked. Sam hadn’t answered, but Dean caught him watching him more and more closely.

“What?” Dean continued to ask as Sam had fallen silent. The kid obviously wanted to say something, but he never answered his older brother’s questions.

***

At some point during the wait for Bobby to arrive, Dean remembered Sam’s black box.

He then turned both the room and then the car upside looking for it, and anything else that had belonged to Sam.

He’d stopped when he noticed the absence of the scratched SW and DW initials and the jammed toy soldier.

***

Bobby was watching him with such concern that Dean was tempted to punch him. The older man had been watching Dean with that worried frown ever since he had rolled up from South Dakota three hours ago, and Dean was utterly sick of it. But then he was sick of everything at the moment. His head kept fucking pounding from the incessant questioning and his stomach rolled nauseously at the constant fear.

Bobby had seemed reassured that Dean was, largely, in his right mind, and wasn’t cursed, or ill. Dean had been able to rattle off the minutiae of his family and his own life without hesitation. Except for the insertion of the ‘mystery brother’, of course, and there was no doubting how hard Dean was holding onto that idea. Despite the total absence of anything belonging to Sam in the room or the car and despite the absence of any memory of the boy in the head of the man Dean trusted the most and considered a surrogate father, despite all that, Dean wouldn’t, couldn’t, give up the absolute knowledge that he had a brother.

“But what about Yellow Eyes? His plans for Sam?” He started again.

“Kid, his plans were for you... you opened Lucifer’s cage...” Bobby responded gently.

“I went to hell... to bring Sammy back...”

Even more gently, “You went to hell for your daddy...!”

“Sammy said ‘yes’ – we stopped the apocalypse...”

Dean’s temper began to rise again as Bobby took a deep breath and then spoke slowly as if he were talking to a two year old...

“Dean, you stopped the apocalypse, you said yes and jumped into the hole”.

Dean shook his head. He couldn’t believe this. He wouldn’t believe this. Yet Bobby had a riposte for every one of his memories, and Sam was absent from them all.

Later that night, after Bobby had persuaded Dean to try to sleep, he lay wakeful and fretful. He needed to be doing something, needed to be looking for Sam. But Bobby had vetoed every move for the moment. The old man had seemed generally hesitant, as if trying to come to a decision, but he had been very firm about this. Dean needed some rest. They could do some research in the morning if he was still so determined.

A sheet tangled round his long legs, Dean tossed and turned for a while, sleep alluding him. Even with Bobby there, he felt cripplingly lonely.

All his life Sam had been a presence, a massive, hulking presence. Even when Sam was at Stanford and they hadn’t spoken for years there was still the amulet that threatened to take Dean’s teeth out every time he ran or fought, and still that programmed number on his cell - the one his fingers had hovered over several times a day. When Sam was in hell there was the old duffle full of clothes tucked away in the trunk of the Impala. He’d never had the strength to throw them away and sometimes, he had caught himself just opening the bag a little and breathing in some essence of... well... Sam. And even in those months of hell when he saw his brother’s body every day but could only see a stranger staring out of his eyes...why even then he had his memories. But now there was nothing – no clothes, no number, and no amulet... his hand flew up to his neck where the missing carved metal used to lie. No demon or God or curse had taken that from him. He had thrown that away in a rash act that he had regretted fifty times a day ever since. Hadn’t he?

Then, intruding into his thoughts, he heard Bobby’s gruff mumbling.

“don’t know what the hell’s got into him... PTSD... what that Kid’s been through... Winchester dragging him all over... finding out about Adam... two visits to hell... ain’t no surprise... total breakdown... an imaginary brother? Jeez...”

A deep, dark and hollow pit settled around his heart. He didn’t even have his memories. Not even those. Bobby had told him his memories weren’t real. Bobby had been real certain that his memories weren’t real.

Suddenly Dean didn’t feel so sure anymore. What if Sam really was only a figment of his imagination...? What if he had never existed at all?

***

Bobby had finally gotten a couple of hours of restless sleep, but Dean had been wakeful all night. Eventually he had gotten up, just as the sky was lightening, and he watched the town begin to stir from the chair by the window. He felt drained and numb. And bewildered. And desperate.

He held on tight to everything he could remember of Sam, turning his memories over and over in his mind forbidding himself to believe that they were all lies his crazy mind had told him He remembered the snotty kid who followed him everywhere; the sullen teenager always wanting to pick a fight with Dad; the image of Sam’s back as he walked away from hunting, walked away from Dean; his tear stained and grief stricken face after Jess; the pranks and bitch fights; demon blood flowing down his chin; the strength of love in his brother’s face when Sam told him that he believed in him; the warmth of him on the few occasions they had actually held each other; the mile wide smile, and the cat like eyes, the wind whipping up the long hair. Every minute of Dean’s life had a recollection of his little brother.

Sam defined Dean. If Sammy had never existed, who the hell was Dean?

***

Dean wanted to shout at Bobby, to just yell Sam’s name over and over until he admitted that, of course, Sam exists.

But Bobby had come to a decision. Dean watched the hesitancy drain away as Bobby straightened and set his eyes firmly on him.

“Listen, son,” he begun, “I know you ain’t gonna want to hear this but I can’t keep letting you perpetuate this. You’ve been through all kinds of hell, both literal and them metaphorical ones too... What?” he questioned as Dean’s eyebrow raised to the ceiling, “I went to school, you know. Might have been back when the west was wild, but I did get my schoolin’.

“ You ain’t been right since Cas brought you back out of Lucifer’s cage but you kept on hunting... Lisa’s back at home worrit sick about you, said you had a fight back along, that you’d started drinking again. Can’t lay a finger of blame on you, boy. Not after what you’ve done and given... but you ain’t given yourself a chance to get over this shit. You’re burning out, Dean, and it’s affecting your head. Let me take you back to Lisa’s, let someone take care of you. Else you’ll gonna end up in some institution on a full dose of whacky meds.”

Bobby had been right in one respect. Dean didn’t need or want to hear this. Somewhere deep within his very being, he knew that he had a brother called Sam, and that he had, only yesterday morning, been walking down the street with him.

“It’s one thing having an imaginary friend when you were a kid, but you’re fully grown now.”

“I had an imaginary friend?” Dean was surprised.

“Inevitable with your upbringing. I used to tell your daddy that you were too much alone but he wouldn’t think of anything other than dragging you everywhere with him. I don’t suppose you spent more an’ a month or two at any school. No time to make friends. Quite the loner, you were.” Bobby huffed out an uncommitted laugh and continued, “You were only little, talking to yourself... and you grew out of it before it became a worry...”

Dean stared at the older man. He knew him well enough to know that Bobby was speaking the truth as he knew it, but Dean hadn’t had an imaginary friend as a child, not that he remembered anyway. He’d been too busy watching out after Sammy. But the thought was followed by a streak of uncertainty. Bobby seemed so sure. Maybe he had been too little to remember, but then a growing suspicion began gnawing away at him.

“What was my imaginary friend’s name, Bobby?” He pressed, dreading the answer.

“Huh.” Bobby was reluctant to answer too, but his new resolve to relieve Dean of his delusions prompted an answer after a moment.

“Sam. His name was Sam.”

***

Sam had found them the hunt. A news story from a town across the state. Ironically, it was a missing person case. A high school principal had reported her partner missing. Not, in itself, particularly signalling anything interesting for them, but the woman was on record claiming that the disappearance was sudden, and was blaming fairies.

Dean had only agreed to investigate because he was still so stoked about being back hunting with his brother – his whole, complete brother. Truthfully, after his previous experiences he wanted nothing to do with fairies, but there was no way in hell he was about to bitch about it and open himself up to either mockery and scorn or, and even possibly worse, Sam’s earnest concern. So he’d gone along with Sam’s plans and had breathed a very relieved sigh of relief when the case proved to be a bust.

The principal had been suffering from ‘exhaustion’. Her job was highly pressured. The woman had obviously suffered a mental breakdown. A partner? No way, the local deputy had said. She lived for her work. If she had anyone, she had kept it very quiet because everyone he had spoken to hadn’t known anything about a partner and besides, the broad had now checked herself into the local mental institution for some R & R. Nothing in it.

“Thank God it’s not fairies!” Dean had declared pleased.

“Hmmmm...” Sam didn’t sound convinced but Dean had grinned, cajoled and persuaded and eventually Sam had agreed. The case proved to have nothing for them. Dean wasn’t going to have to face fairies again this very instant. Slapping his little brother on the back, he had suggested that they go get a celebratory breakfast in the little diner he’d noticed when driving through the main street earlier in the week.

Sam had given him a full belly laugh which had delighted Dean, a rainbow colouring the sky after the rainstorm. He had smiled back, suddenly not caring if Sam saw right through his relief and would tease the shit out of him for the next hundred years. He was still grinning, face beginning to ache, when Sam had grabbed his jacket and looked back at Dean to hurry him along. Dean didn’t know what his brother had seen but he saw Sam’s laughter failing at something he saw in his brother’s face. Dean frowned and wondered what he’d just done but there was still a well’s depth of warmth in Sam’s eyes and he allowed an uncertain smile to creep back.

Sam seemed lost for words. He was so big, so strong, but somehow Dean could only see a vulnerable young boy in his eyes.

Time slowed.

Dean felt a knot of warmth deep in his centre begin to loosen and spread throughout his body, and followed by the usual and familiar, hard ache in his heart.

“Uh, Dean?” Sam’s voice sounded rough and a little broken.

“What?” Dean’s answer was equally ragged. He tried for a light tone and failed miserably. He attempted to tear his eyes away from the heat that seemed to be pouring out of his little brother’s eyes.  
Then Sam shugged.

“Doesn’t matter...” he said breaking the spell. He pushed past Dean to get to the door.  
“Coming?” He had flung the word behind him as he exited.

Dean had the awful feeling that something significant had just happened and that something very important had been teetering on the edge of being spoken. A something that he needed to understand but...he couldn’t, wouldn’t. Inside, he could hear himself screaming “No, Sam!"

He shook himself and followed his brother out into the morning air.

***

Dean was lying on the bed, motionless and twisted into a foetal curl, and had been for a couple of hours. Bobby had sat at the window, ostensibly watching the world pass but in reality hyper aware of every sound and movement the younger man made. Bobby’s concern was tangible and suffocating.

But Dean’s lack of motion merely disguised the frantic, albeit circular, pace of his own thoughts. He went through everything that had happened over the last couple of days seeking some kind of clue because whatever Bobby said about his childhood imaginary friend, however much his own rational brain questioned his own sanity, he could not get rid of a deep boned certainty that Sam was more than an illusion.

Fairies – had the Principal been right all along? Had she later changed her story for some reason? Where had that story Sam had found come from? The story didn’t make sense and Fairies took only first born, which discounted Sam. But they were malicious little bitches and he wouldn’t put it past them, although he wondered if they really had the power to change reality in such a dramatic way.

Perhaps he had fallen into an alternative universe. Djinn? But he’d been aware of the deception last time, just seduced by the attractiveness of the world the djinn had created from his wish. Then again, there was something really fucked up about the monsters at the moment and his djinn induced visions earlier that year had been beyond his understanding at the time.

What about angels? They were certainly dicks and had had done their fair share of meddling in the past. He thought of calling Cas but that bastard nerdy angel was eyes deep in war and unlikely to answer. The others had shown no real interest in the former vessels now the apocalypse had been averted.

A trickster? They would certainly have the power. Possibly. He didn’t really know now. The only Trickster he had ever come across was actually an arch-angel, and was now out of the picture.

Dean’s instincts dismissed all of his theories but kept coming back to Sam’s original hunt. He trusted his instincts. They rarely let him down. There was a missing woman, and another one who had checked herself into the loony bin. No evidence of the missing woman – almost as if the memory of her had been wiped. Except from the mind of one person.

And no evidence of a brother. Dean sat up, his synapses snapping wildly.

Bobby started up and watched as Dean put on his boots.

“Where d’ye think you’re goin’?”

“I can’t stay here, Bobby. I’ve got to look. I might find nothing. You might be right. But I ain’t gonna accept it... not ‘til I’ve searched everywhere, tried everything.”

Bobby considered for a while. Dean watched him anxiously. He was leaving but he didn’t want to have to fight the old man in order to do so.

“You want me to come with?” Bobby finally asked.

Dean shook his head.

Bobby narrowed his eyes, then nodded back.

“Call me if you need me.”

Dean smiled grimly, but gratefully.

“Thanks, Bobby.” And he disappeared into the bright sunlight.

 **Chapter Three**

He started at the library looking through the archived newspapers. He found Sammy’s original story. The police had responded to a disturbance at the house of the local school principal. The neighbours had been woken by the distraught woman claiming that something had taken her lover. The police hadn’t responded to the newspaper’s questions but one of the neighbours confirmed that she had mentioned fairies. Six months ago, Dean would have snorted with derision at this claim. He now knew better. But he was still convinced that this had nothing to do with those pesky sons of bitches.

He searched further back into the archives. Every now and then he made a few notes until he had a side of notepaper scrawled with names and dates. The town had its fair share of missing person cases, but some of them rung alarm bells in his head. At least two missing person claims, in the last fifteen years, had been dismissed as fabrications because it had been proved that the missing persons had never existed in the first place. The most recent in 2001 had been considered a prank, the earlier one put down to a crazy drunk.

Continuing his trawl through the records, Dean felt a headache coming on again. He understood the necessity of research, was even quite good at it, but Sam was so much better that he rarely had to do very much. He looked up and around him, then stretched, his back popping. The librarian, a young brunette who had smiled coquettishly at him when he first arrived, had passed him several times, always with some movement or sound that caught his attention and made him look up. Now she was tidying up around the computers a little more diligently than was strictly necessary. He didn’t blame her. The other clientele were either decrepit or geeks and Dean, of course, was a handsome piece of ass. He quickly checked her out and flashed his patented smile full of charm. He wasn’t surprised when he found a card with a carefully written number on it by his side. He turned triumphantly to Sam, only to brought up cold by his absence.

The librarian smiled hopefully as he left, but her card and number had remained by the computer.

***

It was getting dark, but the colder air was balm for Dean’s thumping head. He debated returning to the motel room and to Bobby who undoubtedly would be waiting patiently for him. He certainly wouldn’t be able to get in to talk to the school principal that night, but he might get lucky elsewhere.

He started the Impala’s engine, noting with satisfaction her smooth growl and drove out of town to the soaring heights of early Geddy Lee.

***

Three hours later, ‘Agent Lifeson’ had spoken to both the claimants in the two earlier missing person cases. He still didn’t quite know what to make of their stories, and his headache had returned bringing with it reinforcements. Both cases shared similarities. Both claimants had reported someone missing – a wife and a boyfriend respectively. But on investigation, there had not been any evidence that this wife and boyfriend had ever existed.

The old man had had a reputation for being a drunk and violent, and judging from the evidence Dean had seen today, his reputation was unsurprising. He had been voluble, only too keen to unload on the sympathetic lawman who appeared to believe his wild story. His wife had been cooking lunch and then she wasn’t. Even the lunch had disappeared along with her clothes, jewellery and their wedding photographs. He thought perhaps she had just buggered off, but how so suddenly and completely was beyond his understanding. But it was definitely her fault, the stupid cow, leaving him to fend for himself. Dean felt empathy for the missing woman as her husband slurped in great slugs of some vile cheap booze and eff’d and blinded at her memory with creative and colourful curses that Dean would have been proud of himself.

Dean had let himself out when the old man had started shouting at the corners of the room.

The second case was altogether more disturbing. A quiet, fading woman who had perhaps once been pretty, had told Dean that he was making a mistake – there had never been a missing person case. She had made it up. She had been stoned and her friends had dared her. She hung her head, seemingly with shame, as she explained but Dean was not fooled and had pressed her hard, with only a small twinge of guilt at her natural and genuine distress. Finally she confessed – it hadn’t been a prank, but no-one had believed her, and she could find no evidence that Brian had ever existed. It had been such a hellish time, missing Brian but everyone thinking she was crazy, that she had eventually just given up. And at admitting that, she had collapsed sobbing until Dean, uncomfortable, passed her a tissue.

“But it is so much worse than that” she continued more quietly, her eyes filling with tears as Dean gazed at her seriously, “I gave up on him long before he disappeared. I had a good, and honourable man who loved me, but I always felt I could do better. I never appreciated him. He was kind of goofy and shy, but he loved me however badly I spoke of him and to him. I gave up on him and I have regretted it ever since.”

Dean believed her story. He didn’t have any choice. If he was going to get Sam back then he needed to believe the tales of drunks and tired, unhappy women.

***

Bobby was watching some old western, when Dean finally returned to the Motel. The picture was kind of fuzzy, but its blue flickering was the only light source in the room. It flashed shadows across the older man’s craggy features. An empty fifth of Jacky D’s sat on the floor by his feet.

“Hey, Bobby,” Dean greeted him with warm affection, but was answered by a gruff monosyllabic reply that could have been interpreted in any way.

Dean shrugged and hit the shower, and only then did Bobby take a deep breath and relax his shoulders, secure in the knowledge that the boy had come back, and seemed OK.

***

The following morning, Dean, dressed once again as Agent Lifeson in his dark suit, had pulled the gleaming Impala up to the front steps of the Moorfields Institue, twenty five miles out of town, and demanded to speak to a Ms. Susan Gallagher. To his surprise, ‘Agent Lewis’, had accompanied him, looking more groomed than Dean had ever remembered, with his greying hair combed back and his sometimes straggly beard trimmed.

Bobby’s old time gentlemanly manners certainly did the trick in charming the fierce dragon on reception and the two of them were soon escorted into a brightly lit office, before being greeted by Dr. Swanson, an earnest young man with big teeth and glasses, who invited the two agents to sit. He heard them out politely, but then put up a fight. Ms. Gallagher was at a sensitive moment in her treatment. He didn’t want her equilibrium disturbed.

Bobby explained equally respectfully that they were investigating a rash of missing person reports in the area. The doctor assured them that Ms. Gallagher wasn’t connected with a missing person case. Dean, rather more strongly, told him that was bullshit because she had made a missing person report. Bobby, having given his surrogate son a surreptitious kick, then courteously pointed out that Ms. Gallagher had yet to officially retract her report and that they were simply here to ensure all the i’s and t’s were dotted and crossed before consigning the case to the closed pile. The doctor prevaricated for a while but was eventually persuaded they intended no harm to Susan Gallagher’s treatment programme.

“What d’ye think you were doing, ye idjit?” Bobby muttered once the doctor had finally left to ascertain Ms. Gallagher’s wishes on the matter. “Keep cool!”

Dean just glared back. It had been two days since Sam had disappeared and he was anxious and impatient.

“You needn’t have come with, Bobby. I know you think this is just a fool’s game...” he said after a short while.

Bobby’s reply was cut off by the return of Dr. Swanson.

“Susan is happy to meet with you for a few moments.” And with that, they were up and following the white coated man down a wide corridor.

***

Susan Gallagher was a woman of a certain age with a certain air of respectability about her. She looked every inch the high school principal in fact, which made Dean feel unaccountably nervous. She looked directly at him, sitting straight and composed, with a thin, long nose. Coolly, and as if she had rehearsed it, she retracted her missing person report claiming that she had been feeling a little off colour recently and that she had become confused.

Dean would have believed it save for the slight wildness in her grey eyes. His instinct kicked in and he knew she was lying.

“Bullshit!” He exclaimed as she finished speaking. Bobby jerked up beside him and began remonstrating. Ms. Gallagher’s eyes widened in surprise for a moment.

“I know you are lying,” Dean pressed harder, brushing off the older man’s warning hand. The woman’s composure began to fall away under Dean’s hot gaze. Her bottom lip started wobbling, and she lowered her eyes.

“I can’t!” she whispered, “I’ll lose my job!”

“What really happened?” Dean continued.

“Dean!” warned Bobby. Dean shook his head at him and rephrased the question.

“What do you think happened?”

The woman’s composure was now completely unravelled. It hadn’t taken much, Dean mused to himself.

“It’s OK. Trust me.” He continued but he needed Sam’s gentle empathy more than anything now, because whilst the reassurance supplied by the treatment plan had obviously collapsed, she was beginning to fold in herself. He just wasn’t the emo ‘lets discuss our emotion’ kinda guy, but if he didn’t work quickly the woman was going to end up in hysterics and of no use to him.

“Look! Something is going on in this town.” He spoke rapidly knowing he was failing desperately, “This is the not first case like yours. We want to help but we need to know what you think happened.” Dean’s panic only seemed to make matters worse, but she was now unresponsive, with tears falling down her face.

“Shit!” So he told her all about Sam.

***

Her grey eyes, large in her narrow face, were now focussed intently on him.

“You are looking for him?” She cried, “You are looking for your brother?”

Dean, completely unable to say anything at this point, nodded. And waited.

“Alexandra,” she finally said sadly after a few moments, “Her name was Alexandra.”

Dean cleared his throat. “What happened?” he asked again but this time more quietly, more gently.

“The weather was so lovely. Alex pleaded with me to go to the park with her for a picnic. She loved the trees, and the sunlight. She was a painter and she wanted to make some sketches. I told her I couldn’t. I had a pile of paperwork to sort through, but she was insistent and in the end I agreed but took my work with me. She wanted me to see the flowers, and the children’s faces, and the sunlight on the river, but all I saw was my work. I felt she was like an irritating bee, constantly buzzing around me, whittling away at my concentration. I could sense her joy at the beauty of the day fading in the face of my disinterest but all I could think about was the next piece of work.

This is the story of my life, Agents. I love my job. I am fiercely committed to what I do and I have always been alone. No time for anyone else. And then she came into my life, and I realised what I had been missing. She was beautiful, and took great joy in simple things. She blew into my life like a breath of fresh air. But there was always work, work... work... and I don’t think I ever really saw her properly,” Her voice trailed off.

“What happened? When did you notice that she was missing?” Dean pushed a little further.

“We were there in the park. Her face was clouded and she asked me if my job was more important than her. I brushed her off, spoke sharply and then she simply wasn’t there. Neither were her things – her sketch book, her bag. I thought she had just gone off to give me some space to work, but after a while she didn’t come back so I went looking for her. I searched and searched, but she wasn’t in the park. I ran home. But she wasn’t there. She had vanished. Her clothes were gone – I thought that perhaps I had finally ruined the most wonderful thing in my life and she had left me. But then I noticed other things – her paintings that had been on the wall were gone, everything that had belonged to her.”

“You called the police?” Dean prompted.

“Yes, because I became frightened. Perhaps someone had taken her. But then the scariest thing... friends, my family, all claimed that they didn’t know Alex. I rang her parents and they denied having a daughter. I thought I was going crazy. Then the school started to mutter about my capability for the job... and I knew that I would have to back down. I might be going crazy – but I know, really know that Alexandra existed, and that she loved me, and that she shared my life with me. But I can’t... I can’t keep fighting everyone telling me something different. I can’t risk everything I have worked so hard to achieve.”

There was silence as she finished speaking. Dean looked triumphantly at Bobby who wore a bewildered frown.

“You’ll not give up looking for him, will you?” Susan Gallagher interrupted the quiet.

“What?” Dean started.

“Your brother. You won’t stop looking for him, will you?” she repeated. Bobby fidgeted uncomfortably beside the younger man, as Dean leant forward and uncharacteristically covered her hand with his.

“Never!” he whispered emphatically.

***

Dean watched Bobby pace the motel room with narrowed eyes, his conviction in the reality of Sam never more tangible since his disappearance. Some kind of freaking mojo shit was going down in this town and in the light of the morning he was going to leave no stone unturned in order to seek it out, kill it and bring back his brother. His inner maelstrom had quietened now that he had a handle on events. He didn’t know what had taken Sam but he knew that something had, and that was, strangely, reassuring. Killing stuff and rescuing Sam was his thing – what he was good at. There was some hope after all. Meanwhile, the sky had turned gloomy in the falling dusk, and Bobby was having some kind of nervous breakdown.

“I... just... why can’t I... I just don’t remember...” Bobby stuttered, disbelief infusing his tone.

“Must be as powerful as hell to fuck around with people’s minds like that” observed Dean. “What in all of damnation can do that?”

The older man shrugged, clueless and still at a loss. Dean could sense that Bobby believed that Susan Gallagher believed, and that her story matched Dean’s but couldn’t reconcile it with his own memories. He also innately knew that Bobby was going to give them both the benefit of the doubt for the moment. There were enough seeds of doubt. He’d seen enough weird crap in his long life to go with the flow sometimes, irrespective of how daft, insane the theory or how much the truth defied logic or reason. Even if he now had to take on trust that Dean actually had a brother called Sam.

“What are you gonna do, Kid?” Bobby finally asked.

“Research, I guess.”

“Well, I can’t get my head round this. I’m gonna go home.” He grabbed his jacket. “You gonna be alright here on your own?”

Dean was surprised, and looked it. Was Bobby bailing on him?

“Ain’t no library in the world got the stuff I have. This is all as confusing a job as I have ever faced, but I can do research. I’ll give you a call if I come up with anything. And if’s there’s nothing, then I’ll head back down. You’ll be OK?”

Relieved, Dean stood and hugged the man who was his surrogate father.

“Thanks, man.” They drew back from each other a little, questions in Bobby’s anxious eyes. “I’ll do fine.” Dean continued.

Bobby nodded briefly and was out of the door. Dean sank back down onto the bed. Bobby was the king of the books. He’ll find out what was doing this. Then Dean would make it sorry that it ever messed with the Winchesters.

He looked around the room. It felt large and empty now Bobby had gone, and the sharp pain of missing his brother overwhelmed him. He didn’t do being alone terribly well. Suddenly, despite of the stories he had heard that day, he began to doubt his previous certainty. There was nothing in that room that belonged to his brother. Not a single trace. What if he was wrong? What if he and Susan Gallagher, the faded woman and the nasty old man were the deluded ones?

***

Twenty four hours later and Dean was at an impasse. Bobby hadn’t turned anything up in the few short hours he’d been at home, and pacing around the town was beginning to frustrate the hell out of him.

They had decided on a God. Simply because they couldn’t think of anything else that could have that power. But Bobby’s trawl though Religions of the World: Ancient and Modern hadn’t turned up a single divine being that had stealing away not only people but all recollection of them as an M.O. He was now attacking the more obscure texts. Distanced from Dean, inflections of doubt were creeping back into his voice. But, he’d said he’d do it and so he kept up his work regardless of how hopeless he thought it would be.

It was only a matter of time though, Dean thought, before Bobby would be back and this time, he’d want to enact some serious intervention to halt Dean’s possible slide into insanity. And with each creeping minute and second Sam became more and more distant and the certainty that Dean was as mad as a hatter marched nearer and nearer. And as the hours passed, Dean could almost understand for himself Bobby’s returning reservations.

Vacillating wildly between an absolute conviction that he had a lost brother out there somewhere waiting to be found and an insidious suspicion that perhaps he had finally lost it, Dean was growing more and more depressed. On the one hand, stories like Susan Gallagher’s seemed to support his own, and allowed a fierce hope to flood his system. But for each step forward, the case took several back, and the wash of confidence faded as quickly as it had risen. The simple reality of Sam’s absence, his existence totally erased from the world, wore him down.

The most significant problem was a lack of commonality between all the missing people – a middle aged lady married to a drunk, a geek boyfriend, the lover of a high school principal and his brother. Dean couldn’t find the connection between them – different gender, ages, sexuality, socio-economic background yada yada yada - and that is what frustrated him the most. His whole hunting career was based on finding connections between seemingly random events to reveal a cause and however hard his mind twisted and probed, he couldn’t find the link in this case.

But more distressing was the emptiness he felt, like a dark, heavy hole in the pit of his stomach. He had lost Sam before and had not been able to bear it. Dean wryly thought of his recklessness and foolhardiness during the Stanford years, and then of the whole trading-his-soul-for-his- brother’s-life saga after Cold Oak. Then there was the sheer horror of the year he thought Sam was dead, and the six months of agony while he watched and listened to a robotic pastiche of his brother – the walking talking physical manifestation which carried no sense of his own Sammy. This had all hurt in ways that had destroyed him. But the notion that maybe all this pain wasn’t real and was simply some expression of a sick and stressed out mind - the thought Sammy didn’t, had never, existed - seemed even worse.

Except for the treacherous idea that Dean might just deserve to lose Sam this one last time, that somehow he didn’t deserve to have a brother, to have Sam. That perhaps he hadn’t learned enough over the last few years. He had lost him, and found him so many times, but how much had changed? How many times had he brushed off Sam’s tentative affection? How many times had he not trusted him because the image of demon blood dripping down his brother’s chin was burned into his memory, because he could still hear Sam’s angry “You don’t know me!” ringing round his head as his brother had chosen that demon bitch over him?

For several hours, he fought to contain those overwhelming thoughts because he needed to keep doing, keep acting, and if he dwelled on them for too long, he would find himself slowing to a standstill – his brain freezing into silence, his heart leaping irregularly, black shadows flitting across his eyes as panic overtook him. He’d shake the darkness from him and kept moving, kept seeking.

At last he came back to the motel room, if not to sleep, then at least to get some rest. And in the quiet stillness of the evening he came to a resolution. If all else failed, this time he wouldn’t keep going. He knew what it was like to live without Sam, and he wasn’t prepared to do it again. If Sam was lost forever, whether because he had been taken, or because he had never existed in the first place, then he had a date with his own .45 and the rest would be silence. He would defend his decision against anyone who cried cowardice at him – he had found his limits and he didn’t care if death took him straight back to hell, he just wanted forgetfulness. The decision finally gave him some measure of peace against his two polar extremes of hope and despair.

Finally he closed his eyes, and slept for a little while.

***

The morning was as grey and as dreary as the day before. Dean showered and dressed determined to keep on with the search until he could search no more. But as he rifled through his duffle looking for a clean tee, his fingers caught the unfamiliar hardness of a small object. He pulled it out to look at it, frowning, because he knew every item in that bag without needing to look after so many packings and repackings. It was a small, square, black box.

Dean began to hyperventilate because Dean had seen this box - this small seemingly insignificant box - before. He had seen it in Sammy’s hands. It belonged to Sammy.

He placed it on the table and gazed at it reverently. Then he reached over to grab his cell phone.

“Bobby?”

“I’m sorry, boy, but I ain’t got anything y….” but Dean interrupted Bobby’s opening sally.

“I found something.” Dean’s voice was breathy as if he had been running. He could feel his heart thumping hard enough to jump straight out of his chest. “I found something of Sammy’s.”

“Oooo Kaaaay!” Bobby answered carefully.

“He’s been messing with this box for weeks now, Bobby. “ Dean continued.

“But I thought you said everything had been taken…” Dean shrugged in answer although he knew perfectly well the older man couldn’t see it. Silence fell between them for a few moments before Bobby finally cracked…

“Well… what’s in it?”

Dean took some calming breaths.

He opened the box.

Sitting on a folded tissue was a length of leather, well worn and rough, looped through a small bronze head.

Suddenly every thing was very clear. Dean knew exactly what was going on. He could see the connection between the missing people. And he knew why his brother had been taken from him.

Because sitting safe inside the little black box, that had been tossed and turned in Sam’s large hands, was Dean’s amulet.

***

The instant he heard the clang of metal against the trash can, he had regretted it. Never more so than through the long months at Lisa’s where he would have done anything to feel its weight around his neck, something solid to hold on to, providing a direct link to his brother when his grief had hurt so bad that not even the bottom of the bottle could soothe. He’d ached for its tangible reminder of a Sam who had cared for him, when Souless Sam’s eyes had been cold and calculating and measured Dean in terms of his usefulness.

But he had cast the amulet aside, bitter and angry, because he thought it meant nothing.

Over the years he had imbued it with so much meaning, so much significance, in terms of his relationship with his brother. Everything he felt about his brother but could never verbalise (because only girls talked about their feelings, right?) was symbolised in that small bronze head. It was a constant reminder of him when they were apart. He would find himself holding it or rolling it between his fingers when he thought of him.

When he was younger, after Sam had had some argument with Dad or a particularly bad day at school, he would curl up beside Dean in the back of the Impala, or on some dingy couch in another worn motel room, tears streaming, eyes imploring. Dean knew what he wanted. Sam, who maintained the strictest and widest personal boundaries with all others, was very different with Dean. From his earliest years he had always wanted his older brother’s touch, seeking reassurance in physical affection - a physical affection that Dean had grown uncomfortable with by the time he had reached puberty for all sorts of reasons he wasn’t prepared to think about. So when Sam needed that comfort, Dean would return with a brief hug which was never enough for Sam, and allow him to nestle in as long as they weren’t cuddling. Sam would then reach out and touch the amulet, a smile returning, and a sense of satisfaction crossing his face. Sammy hadn’t needed Dean to say ‘I love you’ because, Dean believed, the simple fact of the amulet told his little brother all that he needed to know. Certainly he felt the same way – he didn’t need Sam to express his cissy, chick flick emotions when he could feel the warm metal against his chest.

But then Dean had finally come to a point where it all seemed worthless and pointless. Sam didn’t care for him, he had always chosen others before him, he had always left him. Perhaps he’d even given the amulet to Dean out of spite because he was pissed with Dad, or so Dean had felt at this lowest and most cynical moment. He couldn’t trust him not to give into Lucifer. He’d dropped it into the trash and only barely turned back for Sam’s reaction.

But he’d been aware of how much pain he had caused his little brother by this one simple action. In the following weeks, Sam had been quieter than usual, sad and contemplative, and then he had completely floored Dean by apologising and showing an extraordinary faith in his older brother despite all the disappointment he had felt in Dean’s decisions subsequent to their trip to heaven. Dean would have turned out hell itself to retrieve the amulet at this point but the trash can was several hundred miles and several weeks behind them.

And yet here it was… sitting in its little box and Dean realised that Sam must have retrieved it, picked it up out of the trash can and had held onto it, waiting for the right moment to return it. He remembered Sam’s half started sentences, his recent discomfort, and then he felt shame because he knew he had given Sam no chance. His insistence of avoiding anything of an emotional nature, particularly where his little brother was involved, his evasion of the truth, must have made it so hard.

He looked at the amulet. Of course it was still here, it belonged to Dean, not Sam. But... Sam had given it to him.

“Dean…?” He finally heard Bobby’s voice.

“I’ll call you back.” He answered gruffly, throat constricted with emotion.

An old man railing against a woman he thought had left him, still worked up and angry at her disappearance. A sad woman who had mistreated her boyfriend until he had vanished, and then, only then, could she appreciate how much she had really cared for him. A woman who had allowed work to mean more to her than a beautiful woman who had loved her.

There were no connections between the missing persons. The link was between those who had been left behind.

A man who had denied how much he was in love with his little brother, who saw the love and affection his brother held for him but refused to allow himself to get close.

We don’t deserve them, Dean concluded. We are loved but we are not worthy of that love.

 **Chapter four**

“Ishtar,” Bobby stated bluntly down the phone. “Not a lot of Gods or spirits who can do what you’re suggesting they did, but I’m betting that Ishtar fits the bill as close as any. A goddess of love and destruction all rolled into one cranky awful mess.”

“Goddess of Love? Bobby? This makes no sense, man. This ain’t nothing to do with love… this is the opposite – fucking tearing love apart.”

“That’s where the destruction part comes in, you idjit! And I’m not asking how you and this so called missing brother of yours fit into the pattern ‘cos what I don’t know isn’t going to hurt me.” Bobby’s exasperation was evident even down the phone. Dean winced ruefully and silently agreed that this was a conversation he was never going to have with the older man.

“I expect she got wind of us being in town and decided to pre-empt the trouble we were gonna cause her,” he muttered quickly. “So the low down, Bobby. What have I gotta do to trash this bitch?”

“Well, you’re ain’t going to go in all guns blazing, boy, that’s for sure. This ain’t no localised pagan spirit. Ishtar could cream your ass real good. So you’re gonna go in nice and careful, and...”

“How do I waste her?” Dean impatiently interrupted.

“You don’t. She’s a full out Babylonian Goddess.”

“So what the fuck is she doing creating havoc in my corner of the world ?” Dean scoffed.

“Well, lore ain’t so clear on that although there are lots of hints. But one thing is mighty clear – she was powerful once. Killed a whole bunch of her own lovers, and when she finally found her one true love, the God Tammuz, he died and she had to enter the underworld to get him back.”

“What are the hints?” Dean pushed the older man further.

“Ah… you know… she didn’t realise how much she loved until she’d lost that love and now she travels the world wreaking revenge on others… who… you know… have loved… but who have denied it in some way…” Bobby stuttered uncomfortably. “Look, Dean, I can see that these missing people could be linked to Ishtar’s activities but are you sure about this supposed brother of…”

“His name is Sam.”

“hmmm…yeh… well… OK…. are you sure that Sam fits the profile?”

Dean failed to answer for a few moments, then manned up.

“Pretty sure.”

“Huh! Ok. I’ll just stick to my resolution not to ask then… although….”

“Bobby – just stop! No asking is good.” Dean rushed.

“Right.” A few more seconds of silence. “Do you want me to come down, give you a hand, son?”

Dean thanked the old man but he knew this was something only he could put right.

“It’s alright, Bobby. I got it sorted. Give me a ring when you find some way of taking down this bitch.”

***

Bobby came up with nothing, just couple of binding spells which might or might not work but which, all things considering, probably wouldn’t.

And so, with his silver knife, his .45, and wooden stake hidden in the depths of his jacket (in case of all eventualities), Dean found himself sliding onto the bench in the diner opposite the poisonous crone he’d met earlier in the week. He couldn’t have verbalised his reasoning, but he was going with his gut instincts again, the one that had rarely ever let him down, about the old witch. Despite a few hours in the library looking up Ishtar (and he would never be able to explain why he felt he needed to do this when he could have just asked Bobby except that somehow discussing this case was proving to be just too plain uncomfortable), he had merely found a description that described her as a some kind of cock tease who drove her lovers to death through ill treatment. Nada on ways of wasting her, or anything on what she did with the poor saps who got snatched. He couldn’t even see why some Goddess from the other side of the word would want to exact revenge on stupid, blind, idiots like himself. But, somehow, he knew that Bobby was right and that Ishtar was involved and that she was something to do with a little old lady who had looked at him with such hatred at the start of all of this.

She looked up with surprise as he sat down, and then Dean saw resignation settle into her features. He knew that she knew that he knew…

“So ‘fess up, bitch, and give me back my brother,” he snarled.

“You’ve lost everything and yet you are still so arrogant and sure of yourself,” she responded with hard, dark eyes. “Haven’t you learned anything?”

Dean just glared back.

“Where is he?”

“Give me a good reason for giving him back,” she returned.

Dean opened his mouth to speak and abruptly shut it again. No way was he going to share – jeez, he hadn’t been prepared to talk to Sammy let alone a strange old woman who just happened to be some Babylonian Goddess.

“So he isn’t dead then?” He was pretty certain after what she had just asked, but he desperately wanted some assurance.

“Not telling you,” she countered.

Dean’s reached to grab his colt from his waistband.

“Won’t do you any good!” She cackled. And the truth of it shone from her wrinkled features. Dean left the gun where it was, his anger beginning to drain as he realised that he would have to approach this differently from usual. He knew that the gun, the knife and the stake would be of no use and he had no other options.

“He’s my brother, I miss him. I just want him back,” Dean decided to negotiate.

“Why?”

“He’s my brother…”

“Not good enough!” the old lady continued.

“Oh come on!” Dean cried loud enough for the rest of the diner to fall silent. He flicked his eyes about the room, his full-on grade one charmer smile placating the few customers who looked like they might try to interfere. He dropped his voice. “What do you want from me? What do I have to do to get him back?”

“Who says you can get him back?”

Dean clenched his fists tightly because he wanted to grab the tiny obstreperous woman and shake her so hard. Instinctively he knew that was not going to accomplish anything other than one pissed off pagan god. But deep down he knew what she was trying to get him to admit. Shit, he had already come to that conclusion by himself and knew it could be so very simple just to speak out and see where that led him with her. But years of denial, of pushing those feelings so deep down had become too much of a habit (and, dear God, how close had Lisa been under the impelling of Veritas?), and he just couldn’t… he’d never been able to speak the truth before, covering it up with his snark, his jokes, and cheap diversionary tactics.

Dean flinched physically when he remembered Sam’s unhappy responses when he turned away from his affection, or openly mocked his emotional vulnerability. He knew that in some ways, the distance between them since… well, since forever really, was his fault because he couldn’t deal, didn’t want to deal. He was in love with his baby brother, had always been in love with his baby brother. How could he ever? Shit, he didn’t give a fuck about societal norms or religious ethics, but it was against his own moral imperative. Look after Sammy. He could hear his father’s voice now, knew without doubt how the older Winchester would have reacted if he had found out what strange and twisted desires his eldest son held for his younger brother.

And then there was Sam himself. Wasn’t much that Dean feared except a return to hell, but losing Sam was it. And Sam had been totally po-faced about Dean’s supposed ‘alley cat tendencies’, and portrayed a prudishness that a monk would have been proud of (well, when he wasn’t doing monster chicks, that is). How the hell would Sam have reacted if Dean had come on to him in some way, or had even spilled with “Hey, Sam, I totally dig you man, how about giving it up for your big brother?” Dean knew that what he felt wasn’t really just about sex, but somehow it was always the sex part that created the dark hollow pit in his stomach. Of course, there had been times when he’d persuaded himself that a pure, celibate love between them would be okay, but who was he kidding? It wasn’t all about sex but he wanted all of Sam – emotionally, and physically too. He’d spent years, ever since that scorching moment when he’d realised that his little brother wasn’t so little any more, being so careful and guarding his every word and look.

But he was going to have to risk it and deal with the consequences later. The black eyes, and pursed lips opposite were waiting implacably.

“He’s my brother…” he started again, speaking quietly but emphatically as Ishtar moved to interrupt. “He’s my brother and… I… l…l…love him.” He blew out the last of his breath in relief, but frowned hard when the older woman snorted in derision.

“Look, lady,” his anger began to rise again, “you should know how I feel – you lost someone too. You tried turning the underworld upside down to get him back.”

“and yet more arrogance. You compare your paltry love for your brother with mine?” She practically hissed at him, her dark eyes sparking dangerously. Dean fought a growing desire to put some distance between them – the atmosphere was heavy with a living menace. For the first time, Dean could really sense the power in this fragile looking old woman and he was suddenly afraid – afraid for himself but even more afraid for his brother. All his toughness drained out of him.

“I love him, love him like you loved Tammuz and I’ll do anything to get him back” he finally said, simply and truthfully, no fight left, just desperation blowing aside years of silence. Dean was glad Sammy wasn’t there to see his older brother forget he had a dick and turn into a real chick, although he knew that if he ever got his little brother back then they were going to have a serious and possibly explosive talk. Inwardly he felt sick at the thought – the crap he was going to have to face for Sam. And the chances were that, even if he got Sam from wherever the old hag had put him, his brother was never going to want to see or speak to him again.

As if Dean hadn’t gone through enough… but then he remembered Sam’s distracted face over the last few weeks and the small box turning in his fingers. Sam had had the amulet all this time, and somehow he had been unable to give the amulet back to Dean. Was he so unapproachable? Why had Sam been so nervous to give him back something he surely knew Dean would have wanted to have returned?

Perhaps Sam didn’t know – and that made Dean feel shitty – that things had gotten so bad between them that Sam no longer had any idea how Dean felt.

Ishtar relaxed back into the bench, and the crackling tension faded a little, almost as if she could read Dean’s mind and could sense his growing comprehension.

Dean waited patiently – the next move was all hers, but she seemed to have forgotten Dean’s presence and was waving the waitress over. Dean watched her as she requested a pot of tea. There were still streaks of colour, broad stripes of black running through her long grey hair, which had been twisted into an untidy chignon. Her clothes looked faded but had once been expensive, elegant even. If he didn’t know better he’d have thought the old broad was some grand dame fallen on her luck. He stayed still and silent as the tea arrived and was poured into two cups. A gnarled hand, twisted with age, pushed one toward him. He grimaced but the sharp look she gave him wiped it from his face and he took the cup. He sipped it cautiously schooling his face into a blank mask - he hated tea, he’d rather drink toilet water, but felt it was expedient not to mention that to a visiting Babylonian Goddess.

Eventually, she spoke again. But this time her voice was reasonable not surly or angry.

“He was beautiful, my Tammuz. Skin the colour of gold and eyes as dark as night sky. They took him away from me – his once dancing features stilled by death, his warmth turned icy cold."

Dean remembered a bed in a decrepit house near Cold Oak, a body cooling too quickly, and the despair it invoked. He understood and he began to feel sympathy for the old woman.

“I had to get him back, but they humiliated me. At every gate to the Underworld they took my clothes piece by piece until I was naked. I could take nothing in there but myself. How they leered and mocked me – me, a powerful Goddess made to walk the length of the Underworld in shame and ruin. But I did it for him, and would do it again.”

She leaned forward, and Dean swore he saw her former beauty flash across her face.

“Gilgamesh spurned my advances once because he said I couldn’t love, that all I touched rusted and broke, that I destroyed everyone I ever wanted. But what did he know? He didn’t know about Tammuz, and what I would do for him. And all for nothing… I returned without him.” Her dark eyes were sad now as she gazed at the young man sitting opposite her.

“But I don’t understand,” Dean puzzled, “If you felt like that why do you cause so much pain for others?” He spoke rashly without thinking and gulped a little at the sudden rise in the tension again, but Ishtar only frowned and turned to stare out of the window.

“They didn’t let me have him back. Do you think you deserve to have your Sam back?”

“Did you really take him because of me?” Dean asked, a little scared of the answer.

“He has reached out to you many times, young man, and you turn your back. I saw him, following two steps behind. He is always two steps behind you and would follow you into the depths of hell itself but you never turn to him.”

“He doesn’t know if you have forgiven him for betraying him, forgiven him for all that he did while soulless, whether you love him as you once did and it’s hurting him, eating away at him, destroying him.”

Dean breathed deeply, accepting totally what she was saying but feeling desperately uncomfortable at facing the truth.

“You have loved the lion tremendous in strength: seven pits you dug for him and seven.” Ishtar intoned. “You have loved the stallion magnificent in battle, and for him you decreed the whip and spur and a thong. You have loved the shepherd of the flock; you struck and turned him into a wolf; now his own herb-boys chase him away, his own hounds worry his flanks. They said this of me, but it could also be true of you, Dean Winchester.”

Dean nodded his acceptance, although when this was all over, if it was ever going to be all over, he was going to be pretty amused to think that Sam was a lion, or a shepherd or whatever other analogies the old bird had compared him to.

“But you don’t understand... what I am feeling... it’s not natural... he’s my brother... what you are wanting me to do... Sam doesn’t... wouldn’t...” he stuttered.

“Maybe... maybe not. But you’ve never given him the chance to decide for himself. Why do you get to decide what is right or wrong for him? Because you’re the big brother? Give him a chance to talk to you – really talk to you – and then talk back – allow for some dialogue, some sharing...” she started to giggle.

Dean was feeling more and more uncomfortable as each moment passed under Ishtar’s probing, hating that his life, and Sam’s, was laid open for her to read. He got up, distressed and stomach churning feeling the truth in her words smart like whip lashes. But as he got up, the amulet swung free of his clothes. Ishtar’s eyes widened in shock and then fear, as she scooted as far back on her bench as far as she could managed.

“Where did you get that?” she asked in a strangled voice. Dean looked about him, confused, until he realised that her gaze was fixed on the swinging bronze head. He grabbed the leather and held it up.

“What, this?” he returned. The old lady nodded her head faintly, horror pouring out of her black eyes.

Dean narrowed his, realisation suddenly dawning. He pulled the leather over his head and then held the whole amulet towards Ishtar.

“This is my amulet. You managed to wipe everything of Sam out of my life but not this... this remained,” he said softly, sitting back down opposite her.

“Put it away!” she cried as he pushed it nearer her face.

“You’ve seen this before. Haven’t you?” he pressed. “Can it hurt you?” and he quickly brushed the amulet against Ishtar’s hand, raised up before her face in defence. Her skin hissed and she gave a piteous moan in pain.

Dean sat back looking at the amulet in marvel. It had been no use in finding Cas’s God but it seemed it had other purposes too.

“I don’t know what this can do to you, but I am prepared to find out,” Dean said speculatively, as Ishtar crumpled into the little old lady she appeared to be. “I have...uh... certain skills in this... um... field.” Dean hardened his face, allowing his eyes to chill as he dredged up all the hatred Alastair had taught him. A momentary surge of guilt and pity rose up and nearly made him vomit at her obvious terror but the ever present drive for Sam, made him swallow it down.

“It’s Babylonian,” Ishtar began to weep, “forged by Gilgamesh to protect himself from my anger. Please don’t let it come near me. It burns. It burns so hot.”

“Let’s make a deal then,” Dean smiled dangerously now he finally had the upper hand. “You tell me where Sam is and I’ll not torture you.”

Ishtar cocked her head to one side, contemplating him. He waited for a moment then swung the amulet just a little towards her again. She all but shrieked, and rapidly agreed

“He’s in the underworld, Dean. Oh don’t worry,” she responded as she saw his face drop, “I don’t mean hell although, how appropriate it would be if you had to crawl through all that fire and ice again to get your Sammy back. No, I mean the Underworld – it won’t be easy.”

“Can’t you get him out?” Dean questioned.

“No!... no, I swear, Dean, I cannot get him out,” she cried out in pain again as the amulet caught her pinkie finger as it swung across the table. “I put him in there but I cannot get him out. You will have to go, yourself. Persuade them.” The thought of it gave her back a little of her courage and she chuckled.

“You will have to give everything up, Dean. Like I had to when I went to fetch my beloved Tammuz. And even then, there is no guarantee. Look at me, Dean. I failed.”

Dean stood again, towering over the seated goddess. “How do I get to the Underworld?” he asked.

He clutched the amulet tightly in his hand. Ishtar hadn’t taken it because somehow it had power over her. It had given him power over a Goddess that Bobby had declared unbeatable. And it was now going to get him Sam back. Dean couldn’t believe his luck, this sort of thing just didn’t happen to him. He didn’t care what he had to give up – there was nothing in this world he wanted if he couldn’t have his brother. The amulet was going get him Sam.

Ishtar gazed back at his determination, and ungraciously answered.

“I’ll take you there. But I cannot enter, and I cannot help you. Just keep that thing away from me.”

Dean nearly whooped in triumph.

 **Chapter five**

The garish neon sign, flashing irregularly, spelled out Underworld over a dark and insalubrious stairwell. Dean faltered, to an accompaniment of amused chuckles from his divine, if somewhat insane, companion. Since leaving the diner, she had appeared to cheer up – always keeping her distance – but hadn’t recovered her earlier equanimity.

He looked about him cautiously. No-one seemed to be paying attention to them – the odd couple - or to the shadowy entrance lit only haphazardly with blue and pink. He wondered vaguely if the town had any idea about the gateway it hosted on its main drag. But then, he had paced up and down this street in his initial frantic search for his brother and had failed to spot it too. So maybe not.

Ishtar’s bright eyes were fixed on him and her mouth stretched into a hideous grin.

“Nervous?” She cackled, “Shall we go back?”

Dean sharply returned her gaze with a steady glare, then abruptly walked down the stairs into the gloom. He pushed against an unyielding door, then furiously rapped against it. Chin up, and defiance shining from his eyes he challenged her to doubt his courage again.

“Remember... they will strip you naked of everything you protect yourself with,” the old lady warned in the few seconds Dean waited before he decided he had enough and knocked again. “You will have to give it all up.” He didn’t quite get what she meant... but she was rambling to herself as she limped down the stairwell to join him.

“Stripped me naked... shamed me... treated me, a God, like a...” Dean, not for the first time, felt a deep discomfort in his belly, his dark green eyes flickering briefly to the woman beside him and then away again.

The door began to open, but Dean, never very patient, forced his shoulder into the widening gap and stepped inside.

He was in a hallway, painted dark blue with a low light shining feebly from a hatch in the wall. Handwritten black letters on a white card – cloakroom – defined the hatches purpose. A woman with heavy black hair and lips the colour of burgundy wine stood with disinterest on the furthest side of the counter.

“Your jacket?” She asked with a sneer and a bone deep tone of boredom. Ishtar, having followed Dean in, now looked nervous but nudged him anyway.

Suddenly Dean was very reluctant to part with his beloved but now battered leather jacket. He winnowed deeper into its familiar heaviness and warm depths.

“They’ll never let you in.” Ishtar barely whispered so quiet her voice, “ if you want your brother back... you’ll have to give it all up... you cannot enter the Underworld without sacrifice... naked I was before I was allowed through the last gate... I had nothing left...”

If he wanted his brother back...? Still confused, and uncomprehending, Dean knew what he was going to do but his day was taking an even more surreal turn than he was used to, and that discomfort in his stomach was getting worse, roiling like pebbles on a stormy beach.

“Do you want entry or not?” the Cloakroom attendant yawned.

Taking a deep breath, Dean shrugged off the jacket and laid it on the counter. His jacket wasn’t worth losing Sam over.

*******

 _Sammy, aged sixteen, stood in front him, shoulders tense, fists curled tightly by his side and eyes angry but on the point of weeping._

 _“Please... just stay,” the young boy pleaded, and Dean could see the flare of panic and fear behind the pained eyes of his little brother. “Dad’ll be alright without you... he’s always alright.”_

 _“I can’t, Sam – what if he gets injured? It’s a werewolf, a fucking vicious bastard werewolf,” Dean heard himself answering. “It would have got him earlier if we hadn’t been backing him up...” and that, of course, was the issue. Somehow the three of them had been jumped on, unsuspecting of what was in the forest, and John Winchester had been knocked to the ground. The wolf, baring its teeth, had immediately turned to Sammy before it had been uselessly shot at by Dean. He thought he had hit it, caused it some pain, and it had ran back into the cover of the undergrowth giving the Winchester’s time to retreat. John took out his anger at being caught out on his eldest son for doing something so stupid as firing on a werewolf without silver ammo and Dean silently accepted the rebukes too shocked at the sudden threat to Sam to feel the unfairness of it all._

 _Sam, unceremoniously, was dumped back at the motel. Dad grimly loaded silver bullets into his shotgun and Dean packed silver into his own .45 colt. Sam realising that this time he was going to be left behind had started to whine and then argue. Now, with Dad loading up the car again and alone with Dean, he had changed his plea. Not take me with you, but please stay with me._

 _Dean recognised the emotion behind it – the youngster had been badly shaken by the earlier attack._

 _“What if you get hurt?” and that showed just how screwed up Sammy was at that moment, because there was no way he was going to convince Dean that way._

 _“What about Dad? He can’t take on something like this alone.” Dean answered. He felt a momentary flash of anger rising in his gut at that, at how casual Sam was with Dad’s safety. Sam stared defiantly back with a snotty track of tears down one cheek. And Dean had an epiphany – that Sam’s concern was not for himself left alone in the motel room, not a lack of care for his father, but rather for an overriding anxiety for Dean’s own health and well-being. Dean gulped a little at realising he was Sam’s number one priority and it unsettled him._

 _But Dad was Dad, and Dean wasn’t about to turn yellow because a werewolf might or might not turn him into a chew toy. He grabbed his leather jacket._

 _“I’ll be back before you know it,” and he noticed his use of I not the we as if he was acknowledging Sam’s Dean centric world view. Sam took a step forward, chewing now on his bottom lip, and working those puppy dog eyes. Dean flinched and put on his leather jacket, throwing it on like some protective blanket. It wasn’t often that he could refuse his little brother anything._

 _Sam’s outsized hand grabbed his arm as he was turning to go._

 _“Dean?” Sam almost choked on his name and the fear for his brother was now emblazoned across his face._

 _“Hey... its me! One dead doggy coming up...” He tried to pull away, but Sam’s recent growth spurt had added more than inches. A vice like grip held him._

 _“Please, Dean!” Two pairs of hazel eyes stared at each other. Dean was beginning to feel a little weirded out the intensity of Sam’s entreaties and a little claustrophobic at his brother’s proximity._

 _“It’s OK...” He countered gently but firmly, still trying, unsuccessfully, to pull away._

 _“But what would... I... what if....?” Sam’s voice had dropped but there was no mistaking the strength of feeling. He reached his other hand, imploring, touching the older boy’s cheek. Dean’s eyes widened at the fierce shock the touch caused, and he finally found strength to pull away._

 _Shit._

 _“No, Sam,” he allowed some anger to creep into his voice, “Enough. I gotta go with Dad.”_

 _He didn’t allow himself to think about the naked need he saw in his younger brother’s eyes, or the want he could hear in his voice._

 _“No, Sam.” He barely whispered and he pulled his jacket tight around him like it was protective armour and fled the room._

*****

The jacket lay on the counter for a few moments, Dean still holding tight onto it. But then he slowly uncurled his fist, and the dark haired woman began to take it away.

“Wait!” Dean said, a fraction of a second later, “There’s something I need in the pocket!”

“You can’t have it!” Ishtar said viciously, “They’ll not let you have it... you have to give up everything.” She pulled back a little watching him carefully. But the jacket had remained on the counter, and he flipped it over until he could haul out the heavy leather bound journal. He shoved the jacket back at the attendant.

He clutched the journal to his chest and then grimaced when he realised he didn’t have a pocket big enough to carry it in.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered and he knew...

He flung the journal back on the counter.

*****

... _and was nearly swiped by a massive fist. He ducked, barely in time._

 _“Jeez, Sammy, you deformed ape. Can’t you control those oversized mits?” Dean danced light around his hulk of a younger brother. Narrowly avoiding Sam’s voiceless response to his insults, he jabbed quickly under his defences._

 _“Move, Sam!” he heard his father yell, “God, you’re slow.”_

 _Dean caught his brother’s exasperated eye roll and grinned back. “Come on Sammy. Give it all you’ve got!” But Dean could see that Sam was fed up with the sparring now and that he had decided to end it. He threw himself at his older brother knocking them both to the ground._

 _“Unnfff...” Every breath of air was knocked from Dean’s lungs as Sam fell on top of him, head to toe._

 _“Geroff!” he squeezed out._

 _“I win!” Sammy whispered furiously and, because it was in reach, he bit Dean’s ear._

 _“Ow! What the f...!” Sam lifted his head but made no attempt to get up._

 _“Gerrofff!” Dean started to push, but the lack of oxygen was making him see stars, “Can’t..... fuck.... breathe,” and he took a life saving breath of air as Sam hoisted himself up onto an elbow and off his chest._

 _“I win!” Sam repeated._

 _“No way.... you cheated...” Dean started to struggle but had been completely pinned down by all six foot four of his seventeen year old brother._

 _“I win!” Sam was even more insistent, and bit his ear again._

 _“Son of bitch, Sam. What was that for?” but then Dean’s sense of the ridiculous bubbled up and he started to giggle. Sam replied with his goofy mile wide grin._

 _And Dean felt the world fall away as he gazed back up at that smile._

 _The sounds of the road behind the house faded._

 _Dad, sitting on the steps to the verandah writing in his journal, faded._

 _The soft sun in the sky, the roughness of the grass, the coolness of the breeze faded._

 _The world faded._

 _“Can’t breathe,” he whispered seriously._

 _Sam’s smile faltered but the warmth in his eyes stayed._

 _There was just him and Sam._

 _Sammy._

 _“Can’t breathe,” he said again, although his chest was rising and falling, and the oxygen was still being pumped around his body._

 _“Can’t breathe,” as Sam closed the distance between them._

 _“Let him up, Sam.” John’s harsh tones broke through the stillness, shocking and ugly, and Sam was gone. Dean grabbed his father’s outstretched hand and was hauled to his feet. Hands touching only for the length of time it took Dean to rebalance himself, then the hand was withdrawn swiftly as if Dean had caught some awful disease. The two men looked at each other for a moment, one overwhelmed with a maelstrom of every kind of emotion, and the other hardening his eyes, disgust and horror clearly displayed._

 _“What the hell?” his father asked him, but didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and walked away... back to the house... out to a bar... Dean didn’t know where, as he stared at the journal lying forgotten on the top step, pages turning over in the breeze._

 _Later, when the sun had sunk beneath the horizon, and Dad still hadn’t returned, Sam found Dean still sitting on the top step, the leather bound journal closed. Dean flinched when his younger brother reached down to touch his shoulder._

 _“No, Sam,” he whispered, brushing Sam’s hand away._

****

The jacket and journal were squirreled away in the depths of the cloakroom and another door opened into a corridor with black and white tiles and the same midnight blue paint work. At the far end stood a very large rotund man, wearing a black suit and black sunglasses. It was very dark in the corridor and Dean couldn’t help himself.

“It’s night, pal, and only a douchebag wear sunglasses inside.” Approaching closer Dean realises the man was even larger than he first thought – several inches taller than his brother and twice as wide. But the man remained impassive despite the insults.

“Weapons must be checked in here!” the guy had a deep rumbling voice, and a metal detector.

Dean wondered for a moment which of his secreted store of weapons he could continue to conceal but, catching a glimpse of Ishtar’s eager face watching for him to fail, ensured he threw out the thought as soon as it occurred.

“I cannot go any further,” she muttered as he pulled his gun from his waistband and then reached down for his knife. “This is the entrance to the Underworld. Your brother is in there. If you love him enough, you might bring him back, but maybe it is his fate to stay in its depths forevermore, like my beautiful Tammuz.” And with that she turned back the way they had come. “I’ll not wish you luck, Dean Winchester.”

Dean watched as she exited back down the corridor, a little relieved.

But then a discrete cough reminded him of the immediate concern. He placed both the gun and the small silver knife on a small table that had been hidden by the bulk of the bouncer.

***

 _His eyes flickered open to see Sam only inches away, eyes leaching worry and concern._

 _“Dean? Dean? Wake up, man!” Dean groaned and wrinkled his face in agony. There was a crushing pain in his head and sharp agony in his leg._

 _“mnnghff,” he tried to speak and used a hand to grab hold of Sam’s jacket._

 _“Oh, thank God!” his brother exclaimed and placed a hand over Dean’s heart. The warmth of it seeped into his torso..._

 _“mmm’alright!” He finally vocalised although his tongue felt thick and clumsy in his mouth._

 _“God, Dean – what an idiot!” Sam’s sudden change of tone inspired more drumming in his head and Dean winced again. Sam’s eyes were glaring at him now, and Dean assumed that this transformation had everything to do with Dean’s obvious recovery from imminent death. He started to struggle to sit up, Sam holding him with one hand on his back. The other hand resolutely sat over his chest._

 _“mmm’kay, Sammy,” Dean started again, becoming more and more aware. “Jeez, wha’happen?”_

 _“I had it, Dean, but no, you had to play the fucking hero!” And with that Dean’s recollections returned. The dark forest, the chase over twisted roots and through whipping branches, then the Wendigo looming large over Sam. Sam had his flamethrower lit, but Dean didn’t hesitate and threw himself between the monster and his brother just as a large hand descended. Everything went black after that._

 _“Could have killed you...” he tried grinning but his face hurt quite badly._

 _“No. It couldn’t. I was about to toast it! Instead it knocked you to kingdom come. I thought it had killed you.” Dean could sense that Sam was very angry. He was perceptive that way._

 _“Where’s it now?” He went to look around him but the suddenly there were stars and a whoozy feeling in his stomach._

 _“Shit, Dean. You’ve got a least a concussion, just sit still!” Sam was still sounding pissed but the undercurrent of concern had returned, “It’s dead, I managed to toast it on my own, no help to you!”_

 _“Way t’go, Sammy... but m’good!” Dean started to shake off his brother’s outsized hands aiming to get up._

 _“For fuck’s sake...” Sam easily held Dean down. “At least give yourself a minute.”_

 _“Gotta get out of here!”_

 _“I’m not arguing with you, but give it minute for your head to settle. I really don’t want to have to carry you out!” Dean recognised Sam’s pinched bitchy tones._

 _“You sayin’ I’m fat?” Dean started to laugh but the head really couldn’t stand it._

 _Sam response was simply his highest grade bitch face, that Dean so loved to provoke, and a lapse into silence. Dean sat leant up against his brother’s chest enclosed entirely in his arms. He wasn’t particularly comfortable but the drumming in his head began to subside, and the world became more sharply focused. He breathed deeply smelling the clean pine of the forest and the earthy tones of Sam. His brother radiated warmth and his strong limbs supplied support. Faintly, he felt Sam’s breath over his neck. After a few minutes his discomfort rose to intolerable levels._

 _“Not that this snuggling ain’t nice, but it’s time to haul ass,” he said sarcastically ignoring the sharply indrawn breath he got in response. He nearly regretted it when the man mountain behind him suddenly pulled free and then dragged him to standing. The world made some mad spins, Dean felt his dinner attempting to revisit, and his legs crumbling beneath him. Only they didn’t. Sam thrust his shoulder under his right arm and held him up. It was then he realised that he was totally unable to put his right leg on the ground without a girly scream of pain. He hoped, rather unrealistically, that Sam hadn’t noticed._

 _“I think I’ve broken something,” he stated obviously._

 _“No shit,” Sam grunted back – definitely still pissed._

 _It took a long time for the two of them to retrace their steps back to the Impala, and by the time Sam had inelegantly shoved Dean into the passenger seat, the older brother was green, with the spinning and the pain. Sam held onto him for several moments until Dean began to feel the world right itself again and tried to shrug him off._

 _“Dean?” Sam let Dean pull free of his arms but stayed crouching by the open door of the car. Dean could feel sweat beading at the back of his neck and knew that he’d got himself into some serious shit this time._

 _“You gotta stop this, Dean. I’m not a kid anymore and I can look after myself,” Sam eventually said cautiously. “I don’t need you to always step between me and the monsters.”_

 _Dean barely had the energy to respond with the mocking that statement deserved, but the face he pulled communicated the idea very effectively. Dean recognised the hurt inflection in his brother’s voice as he continued._

 _“I’m back in the game now, Dean – just trust me!”_

 _Dean turned his head to face Sam, who was staring up at him very intently._

 _“One day you gonna do something so completely stupid you gonna get yourself killed.” Sam’s voice hitched slightly at this. “What am I gonna do then? I lost Jess. Dad is god knows where.” There was something still of the little kid in Sam’s pleading._

 _“S’what I gotta do, Sammy boy. I gotta look out for you.” Dean repeated his mantra faintly._

 _“No, Dean. We look out for each other.” Sam’s hand rose to cup Dean’s cheek. “Jesus, man, I love you – what the hell I am supposed to do if you get killed rushing in with such damn recklessness!”_

 _Sam’s eyes were shiny with tears and strong emotion. Dean reached out and grabbed his brother’s shirt and pulled him in closer._

 _“Ain’t going anywhere, Sammy,” and he rested his hot forehead against Sam’s cooler one. He closed his eyes as he breathed in his brother’s scent. Then sighed deeper when he felt Sam’s lips brush as gently against his cheek, relaxing into the strength that his brother exuded as he held him close._

 _But fuck, he couldn’t, wouldn’t.... he jerked sharply away despite the pain in his head and leg._

 _“Well, this is nice, we’ll be writing love poems and singing Kum Ba Yah next!” He spluttered out viciously sharp as a knife or a bullet, utterly aware of the shocked expression on Sam’s face._

 _“Time to get me to an ER, baby brother, not go all girlie on me,” he said, without looking, as Sam shifted into the seat on the driver’s side, and pretending he didn’t see the devastation written across his little brother’s face. Sam tried once more reaching out to touch him._

 _“No, Sam,” Dean brushed his hand away._

 _Crunching the gears provocatively and snarling “Asshole” under his breath, Sam made a U turn and pushed the Impala forward. Why the fuck Sam stayed with him was a complete mystery to his older brother who wanted to push Sam as far as way as he possibly could and yet knew that he would die without him._

***

The door remained closed. Dean looked expectantly at the huge bouncer, eyebrow raised in question. The man remained unresponsive.

“So, you got everything. Time to let me in?” He questioned impatiently.

“Not quite, Mr. Winchester. There are still one or two things remaining.” Clear cut British vowels came from behind and Dean swivelled round to face a tall, thin man in an impeccable tailored pin-stripe suit. Dean widened his eyes to take in the walking cliché.

“I’d like to welcome you to Underworld, Dean, but we have a very strict policy. You cannot take anything of worth in with you.”

Dean looked down at his plain cotton shirt, tee and jeans. None of it had any value.

“I mean, of course, the keys.” The gentleman prompted.

There was a short pause until Dean got enough control of his breathing to be able to respond. This was so much worse than he anticipated.

“The keys to what?” he prevaricated.

“Very droll, Dean. But seriously. I understand you have an urgent mission to rescue your brother, so I will need to take the keys of your car from you.”

Dean took several gulps of oxygen and still couldn’t quite manage to dig the keys out of his jean’s pocket.

“Really?” the skeletal man puzzled. “You would place your car as more important than your brother?”

Dean wanted to deny the charge. Of course, Sam was more important – he was more important than anything but... his car? This was kicking a man when he was down.

“Any chance...?” he started, but the man merely shook his head and gave a polite smile.

“Well, it was nice meeting you. Perhaps you’ll visit us again one day?” the man finally said with another supercilious smile as he gestured towards the exit.

“Wait!” Dean finally reached into the depths of his pocket and pulled out the keys. He held onto them tightly for a moment.

“Chaeron?” the tall man motioned the bouncer to come forward. A large hand was held out in front of Dean, who looked up at the taller man with dislike. Slowly, very slowly, Dean placed the keys into the hand and let go.

***

 _Dean had forgotten what the original argument had been about or who had started it. Something petty and stupid, no doubt – Dean being thoughtless or gross or Sam being bitchy and whiny but it had now developed into epic proportions. The shouting had turned into days of an icy silence punctured only by the cruel, snide comments muttered under angry breaths. After that it become a contest of wills over who would break first to try to patch things up, both of them too proud and, Dean ruefully reflected, too stupid to back down._

 _Of course it was exacerbated by Ruby’s continual presence or Sam’s long nights out or probably both ‘cos he knew perfectly well that they were connected. He hadn’t forgotten the scene he and Bobby had first walked into on his return from hell and Sam had said he had given up his ‘powers’ or whatever the fuck they were, but Dean was pretty sure that he was lying, and the bitterness it invoked in him seemed like poison until he could barely look at his brother and ensured that every little irritation was blown up into overwhelming significance._

 _They’d returned to the small motel room, bloody and sweaty after the latest hunt, long limbs and broad shoulders awkwardly in each other’s way as they cleaned up and showered, but carefully not to touching, not catching each other’s eye, in some kind of a perverted dance. Sam didn’t even react when Dean ordered in Chinese and cracked open a bottle of Jack Daniels. He took the bottle when Dean put it back on the table, taking great slugs of its fire. Then the TV went on, volume turned high. They ate in silence when the food eventually arrived._

 _Finally it was Sam that broke._

 _“This is fucking ridiculous, Dean!”_

 _Dean couldn’t agree more but was still pissed off enough to remain silent. Sam grabbed his arm roughly and pulled him round to face him. Dean automatically formed a fist, and shoved back at his little brother._

 _“We’ve gotta talk about it!”_

 _“ ‘bout what, Sam? ‘ bout how you’re a miserable bitch all day long and get on my fucking nerves?” He finally answered._

 _Sam huffed in exasperation and shook his head. “Is that really what you think this all about, Dean?” God, Dean hated how Sam drilled his name when he was trying to drive a point home._

 _“No, I really don’t think this is about some stupid shit I said last week, or something dumbass thing you did – but let’s not go there, shall we?” he bit back angrily._

 _“When you were gone...” Sam began._

 _“Don’t.” Dean warned in return._

 _“You won’t talk about it.”_

 _“Don’t need to talk about it. I’m fine. You’re fine. The whole bloody world is fine. Just back off.”_

 _Sam eyes were blazing but Dean just couldn’t - just wouldn’t. He knew damn well that his actions were a kamikaze dive into the destruction of his relationship with his brother but what was the alternative? Opening up and sharing? Dean knew how black and rotten his soul was, what foul and dark monsters lurked in its decayed depths and he wasn’t prepared to let Sammy even catch a slight glimpse of it. He was still the big brother and he still had his job to do._

 _“De...”_

 _“Shut up, Sammy. I ain’t talking ‘bout it, no matter what you want.”_

 _He turned away, picked up his keys and went to the door._

 _“I need some air,” he explained._

 _“Great!” Sam answered sarcastically. “Fantastic. Perfect! Every damn time. That’s it, just leave when the heat gets too tough.”_

 _“Says the kid who’s always jumpin’ on the next bus,” Dean burned with righteous indignation._

 _“Oh, yeh? You always act like I am the one who leaves you all the time – but it’s what you do, all the time, Dean – you may only be in the next room, or just driving round the block in your stupid fucking car, but you are always walking away from me.” Dean’s brow lowered even further at the insult to the beloved Impala and he started to answer back but Sam continued, the flood of words unstoppable._

 _“I just want you to face me, Dean. To acknowledge how I feel, and, damn it, to acknowledge how you feel. What is here, between us – it’s fucked up, I know. God, I know, Dean – I’ve tried to run myself – I ran all the way to California because I felt... well, because.... but it doesn’t work, it doesn’t help!”_

 _“Jesus Christ, just. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” Dean was shaking with emotion now, bile rising, but still facing the door so he didn’t have to see whatever he might see across Sam’s face. “You haven’t got a clue, little brother, not a damn idea. And this? Getting some air ain’t nowhere near abandoning us for college. It’s just getting some air because you are irritating the hell out of me and it’s better than smacking your face!”_

 _He slammed the door behind him to the accompaniment of Sam’s “Very mature!” response._

 _Three hours and 120 miles later, he parked the Impala in front of that very same door. Sam was already in bed but definitely not asleep, judging by the uneven breathing. Dean threw himself on top of the covers of the other queen and didn’t sleep either._

 _But the following morning, a kind of uneasy peace seemed to be achieved. Sam brought in coffee, and placed it on the table where Dean was meticulously cleaning assorted weaponry. He carefully laid his hand on Dean’s shoulder._

 _“No, Sam!” Dean just as carefully replied, and the hand was removed quickly as if scolded by a scorching heat._

***

“OK, so I’m ready now!” Dean practically bounced up on down on the soles of his feet in anticipation, keyed up over giving up the Impala so readily.

“Nearly!” his British companion replied.

Dean just closed his eyes. Perhaps they did want his clothes after all. Perhaps they wanted him to enter the Underworld butt naked. Hadn’t Ishtar implied something similar. Well, nudity wasn’t something he was too troubled by – he was the remarkable Dean Winchester after all, but were all the chicks down there really ready for his magnificence?

He sighed deeply and started to pull off his over shirt.

“Ahem...” the thin man started to chuckle deep in his throat. “You can keep your clothes!”

Dean was secretly relieved but shrugged nonchalantly nonetheless.

“So what else?” he asked.

A long white finger reached towards his chest. He took a step back uncertainly. Then stopped when the finger hooked the leather around his neck and lifted the amulet. It looked dull in the gloom of the corridor.

“This is the one thing Ishtar was unable to take from you,”

“What? This ole thing. It’s just something that my brother gave me. It might once have been a SatNav for finding God but it’s useless now. It just has… uh… sentimental value,” Dean explained, refusing to explain that it had also provided leverage against Ishtar.

“If you say so,” answered the gatekeeper. “Although I think you always underestimate the worth of sentiment, Dean Winchester.

“What the hell does that mean?” Dean was rather taken aback, but all he got in return was an enigmatic smile.

“I know what it is, who made it,” the answer came. “And I know what it means now. You cannot enter the Underworld without giving up everything.”

The weight of the amulet around Dean’s neck was still strange after so many months without it, but the simple action of putting the leather cord over his head had been familiar and reassuring. He was now very reluctant to remove it again. It was the only thing he had left of Sam. As he lifted it, its weight seemed to increase, but he still stripped it from his neck and placed it reverently in the palm of the waiting hand.

He was ready. He was just Dean now – he had nothing else. Just Sam waiting on the other side of the door.

***

 _When Sam had jumped into the gaping hole, into hell itself, Dean’s life had been completely devastated. He’d known when he had eventually accepted Sam’s plan that he was going to lose him, but no amount of forethought prepared him for the wrenching agony as the ground had closed up behind the falling men, and finally, finally he was left alone. Sam wasn’t coming back ever._

 _For months, after he had found his way to Lisa’s, it was all he could feel. The pain steeped into his very marrow, relentless and debilitating. Alcohol only dulled it a little, and Lisa’s seemingly unconditional love and acceptance soothed but a fraction. But when Ben looked at him, eyes shiny with awe and worship at this man who had saved his life, who drove the coolest car in the world, and was in every way a hero to him, the anguish would sharpen its teeth and he would feel like he was falling too, without hope of landing or rescue, because all he could see were Sammy’s eyes, shiny with awe and worship, gazing in admiration at his older brother. Even forty years in hell seemed like a Caribbean cruise compared to those first few months._

 _Finally, he had attempted to build walls around the rawness, to try to protect others from the weeping open sore as if it had been some kind of infection. Then the alcohol was able to make him gloriously and deliciously numb for a short while, Lisa with her warm accepting body began to provide some succour, and the routine of normality distracted and the simple action of caring for Ben gave what was left of his life some meaning._

 _But there were times... when he hadn’t been able to steel himself against a pleading look from his surrogate son, or he had found himself lifting the tarp draped over the Impala to catch a glimpse of that polished chrome, or when he turned to make a random snarky comment or some stupid joke and found no-one there making bitch faces back at him. Then... then he was crippled with it. The utter sense of loss and loneliness, in a world where he had far more than he had ever had in his life, but still seemed to have nothing._

 _It was at these times when he would reach up to grab the comfort of the amulet as he had done countless times before and it wouldn’t be there, it’s weight was a ghost around his neck. And he would rage, incandescent and awful, at having to live a life when Sammy had given up everything. At still to be breathing when Sammy no longer drew breath. At still to have the blood pumping round his veins, when Sammy’s had been spilled into the deep of hell. Because it meant nothing, life was nothing, he was nothing, not without his brother._

 _He would wake in the mornings disappointed that he hadn’t died in the night, drawing in hated breaths while he strengthened his resolve just to be. He had promised Sam, and without the amulet that promise seemed to be the only thing that still tied him to his little brother, but in his head he could hear the echo of bronze on aluminium as the amulet fell into the trash can and it blamed and shamed him and cut what little peace he had left into tiny pieces._

 _And he would fervently wish, desperately pray and cajole and plead, to be back on that hallowed ground at Stull so he could take his brother in his arms, kiss him and say,_

 _“No, Sam.”_

***

Fully clothed yet feeling as naked as the day he was born, Dean walked past the massive bouncer to the door of the Underworld. His chin was high, and there was a challenge in his eye. Next time he would be walking through that door, albeit in the opposite direction, he would have Sammy with him.

 **Chapter six**

The Underworld was a little disorientating. It looked a lot like a nightclub from the outside and the entrance hallways, but somehow Dean had expected something different when he had finally breached the gateways. Something more Greek myth-like (a dark cavern, or a boiling black stretch of water, and grim ferry men, or dogs with three heads – although he was somewhat grateful that he wasn’t facing that particular cliché), than Club Rococco on Golden Oldies night. He stopped in amazement, mouth wide open as he took in the mottled blue tiled walls, decorated with massive golden images of animals, recognising a proud lion and a horse. Huge square columns held up the high ceiling, and a wide dance floor in black marble stretched out before him, empty, and surrounded by small round tables and gold painted chairs. Around the main room were stone surrounded and arched doorways into smaller rooms, decorated with a script which looked runic but which Dean knew was not. It looked very exotic, but when he looked more closely, there was a sheen of grease on the tiles, and the golden bas relief was darkened with age.

There was music blaring out, but so distorted, it was unrecognisable. Turned out that the Underworld was, after all, a cheesy nightclub – a cheesy, Babylonian night club in fact. Who knew?

Around the room, he could see the shadowy shapes of people – some sitting alone, some in pairs. A few were desolately wandering around the edges of the room. A woman passed him, dressed in a tight, short red dress totally unsuitable for her age, but Dean was shocked at the tiredness in her face and lost look in her eyes. She turned this way and that as if she were searching for someone. Some interest flared as she noticed his glance, but it faded quickly back into aimlessness as she carried on past him. He was someone new, but the not the someone he sensed she was looking for.

And then he felt it – the heavy atmosphere, cloying and depressing. Dean had been to many places, some were literally hellish, but this was the saddest. Everything looked faded, dreary, and the customers, few though they were, were as worn out as the decor.

Dean made his way to the bar, almost automatically, his need for something with a bit a fire in it overcoming his immediate concern to find Sam. The bar tender served him a whiskey without being asked, and looked him over with an expression akin to sympathy.

“First day?” he asked. Dean nodded but was a little alarmed at the possible second and third days that the bar tender’s question had implied. He guessed that not many people left the Underworld. He drained his glass in one then focused his mind on his task. The atmosphere promoted a sense of lethargy, and his movements felt sluggish as if he were walking under water, and his brain was beginning to dull. Without even consciously thinking it, Dean understood that he took too much time looking for his brother, he would end up as grey as the other... customers? And then, he’d be wandering around this room forever more, never noticing when he passed Sam.

But even with a whiskey burning down his throat, Dean still had yet to be caught in the lassitude of the club, and Sam was nearly six foot five, and usually difficult to miss. It took him three seconds precisely to scan his eyes around the room and fix themselves on the shadowy shape of a man-giant sitting in Sam’s typical hunched over pose at a table opposite. Triumphantly and with a new sense of vigor, Dean marched over until he was stood in front of what was undoubtedly his brother, head down, with shaggy unkempt hair falling over his face, shoulders stooped, hands limply lying on bent knees.

“S..S...Sam?” Dean stuttered, an overwhelming joy jostling for attention with a rising fear.

His brother raised his head slowly, as if it exhausted him to do so, and gazed up at the man standing over him with dead, dull eyes.

“Dean?” he answered thickly, lifeless eyes beginning to light up.

And that was that. Dean surged forward, arms wrapping around his little brother, to just hold him. He could feel the slow rise and fall of Sam’s chest as he breathed, could feel his warm breath on his neck his brother burrowed into his shoulder, could feel the heat of him, so he just held him and held him, so tightly that he thought he would never be able to let him go.

“Oh God, Sammy. I’m sorry,” he murmured after a few moments and he pulled back, just a touch to take a look at his brother. As he did so, Sam tightened his own grip on Dean, perhaps afraid of him disappearing.

“It’s alright, Sammy. I got you now, I’m getting you out of here,” he placated the larger man.

“Oh, yeah, please Dean, get me out of here... it’s so... so...” Sam’s brain still affected by the sluggishness induced by the Underworld, searched deeply for the word. “It’s so...boring!” he finally finished.

Dean just looked at him in astonishment then burst out laughing.

“Dude – I’ve been imagining you dead or tortured at the hands of some sick monster and instead... you’re bored?”

“Bored to death, Dean!” Sam was becoming more and more awake. “I thought you’d never get here.”

“What? Wait? You were expecting me?” Dean was stunned.

“Of course. You always come for me,” and with that Sam smiled his nuclear smile, “but you took your fucking time. Christ, man, I was going out of my mind.”

Dean basked in the heat of the smile, and with rising contentment pulled his brother back in toward him to hold him tighter. But Sam had other ideas. Raising his hand from his brother’s back, he cupped Dean’s cheek. Dean stiffened.

“You always come for me,” Sam repeated and he leant in and brushed his mouth against Dean’s lips. The older brother tasted softness and sweetness there, but couldn’t reciprocate. He mentally fought with himself. He couldn’t... wouldn’t...

“No, Sam,” he started to say, then stopped.

“I have to say something,” he continued. “If I don’t then neither of us are getting out here. So just shut your cakehole and listen.”

Sam’s eyes flickered with confusion and concern as he pulled back his head a little. He was already shaking off the cloying atmosphere, the greyness leaving his cheeks. He shook his head back to look up at his older brother. His feline eyes catching the low light. Dean caught his breath because he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

“I...well... um... damn it. I’m no good at this,” Dean snarled in frustration at how much his brother could unman him.. Sam merely tightened his grip round his brother and stayed silent. There was still barely an inch between them, and Dean was almost sitting in Sam’s lap, although he was going to deny that most vehemently if they ever got to tell this story to anyone else. He took a few deep breaths and decided that the band aid just needed ripping off as quickly as possible.

“I love you.”

Sam jerked, astounded, then his face started to split into his dangerously bright grin.

“I know that, man. It’s why you’re here, why you’re always here.”

“Yes, no... not like that... well, of course like that... but also...” Dean cursed himself inwardly, not being able to find in himself the suave, smooth talker of a thousand meaningless pick ups. This mattered, and he was finding this the most difficult thing he had ever done. Not helped by the ridiculously goofy, utterly delighted, look that was encroaching across his brother’s face. He frowned.

“It’s not funny,” he declared.

Sam turned his smile down a few gigawatts, but there was still a sparkle in his eyes.

“No, it’s not funny. Not funny at all. But I get it, man. I always have. You’re the most infuriating, frustrating, annoying person in the world, Dean, but I know how you feel. I have always known how you feel. After everything I have done to you, leaving you, not trusting you, betraying you, and you are still here, and you still turn the fucking world upside to find me. How could I not know? Every time you made me cocoa at three in the morning when I couldn’t sleep, every time you played interference between me and Dad, every time you step between me and a monster, every time you let me have my own way, even the times when you refuse to talk because you want to protect me from what you think are your darkest horrors, you are telling me how you feel. You don’t have to say the words, Dean, I already know.”

“But...” It was Dean’s turn to be astonished now, “But..” and speechless.

“It makes me mad sometimes, it hurts sometimes, and there were times when I wasn’t at all happy, when I doubted you. But you let me jump into that pit, and I could see in your eyes that you didn’t want me to but I asked you to let me and you did, and you didn’t leave me when I didn’t have a soul, despite all that provocation. Even I get the message, Dean. There ain’t nothing you wouldn’t do for me, and it’s because you love me. I get it.” One of Sam’s hands was still holding his face, but the other crept up to the back of his neck, holding Dean still, ensuring that he wasn’t going to escape.

But Dean still needed Sam to understand more. Dean’s heart was so full that it was only a matter of time before it exploded clean out of his chest. But there was still something more to explain, to confess...

“Perhaps that’s all true,” he finally said. “But I have never let you touch me... really touch me... and... don’t deny it, Sam, because I know you wanted it... and it’s because... well... you’re my little brother... I had to take care of you and touching you, wanting you in that way didn’t seem right. At this moment in time, I can’t even remember why it wasn’t right – just worried about what Dad would think, I guess - don’t care much about others concerning themselves in our business. But the why isn’t important.”

Sam’s face had fallen, eyes darkening into seriousness, and body with an almost imperceptible trembling. Dean had to continue on, he really didn’t want to spend the rest of his life stuck in this skeevy dive, and he knew what he had to say.

“I kept pushing you away, lying to you, Sammy, because I knew how you felt, and what you really wanted, and I wanted it too, felt it too but... I couldn’t, I wouldn’t...” Dean felt the tears in his eyes and hoped, without hope, that Sammy wouldn’t notice, but he pressed on, “And don’t try to make me feel better, because I know that I hurt you badly because of it – you ran to Stanford, you ran to Ruby because I couldn’t, wouldn’t give you what you needed, and I’m sorry, and I love you, and I can and I will...”

And with that he finally made the first move, allowing his lips to seize his little brother’s lips aggressively, too many years of denial melting away. And it was suddenly right, and proper, and what was supposed to be.

***

All three gatekeepers were stood by the door, as the brothers approached, Dean painfully aware that Ishtar had been allowed of the Underworld but had been forbidden to bring out her lover. He was clutching Sam’s hand tightly and could feel his warmth the whole length of his right side as they stood staring defiantly.

“You can’t keep us here.” Sam said. “I was brought here alive and without permission.”

The heavy, Chaeron, took a threatening step forward.

“Hmm... but we can’t have everyone just deciding to up and leave us, can we?” The man in the suit answered superciliously, but then Dean noticed his amulet hanging around the man’s neck, and got angry.

“I paid you good,” Dean kept a cool voice. “You even got my car!” He felt Sam stiffen beside him.

“So you did, Mr. Winchester. You gave up everything to get in here to find your brother.”

“Dean? No?” Sam whispered, horrified. Dean turned round to face him.

“It’s alright, Sam,” he answered the shock in his brother’s face. “Nothing I wouldn’t do again. It’s not important. You’re what’s important.”

Sam answered with a fierce swipe of his lips across those of his brother then drew up to his full height, eyes blazing, chin raised, dark hair falling back. The three gatekeepers fell back in surprise.

“We’re leaving now.” Sam stated firmly, and, so quickly, that Dean almost missed it, he reached out and snatched the amulet from around the man’s neck, breaking the leather. Chaeron, pushed him back but it was too late.

Sam held up the amulet and to Dean’s eternal surprise it started to glow.

“We’re leaving and we are leaving now,” Sam repeated. There was a short pause, while all the protagonists considered their options. The light of the amulet was now shining brightly between them. It may have been made by a king long ago to protect him from the anger of a goddess, it may have once been a guide to find a god, but now the amulet meant something much more. It meant everything that was Sam and Dean and everything they were for each other. Their love was giving it power, although quite what sort of power, Dean couldn’t figure.

“Let us pass!” Sam snarled again. The amulet lighting his face – his strength, his determination written strongly across his features. Dean’s mighty lion indeed.

Dean laughed then because he knew that it was, in the end, all going to be so simple. Tammuz hadn’t loved Ishtar enough. No wonder the old Babylonian goddess was bitter.

He stepped forward, elbowing the massive bouncer to one side, glaring at him and the cloakroom attendant.  
“You heard the man,” he said smirking. “We’re going.”

And in the end, even though he had to give up everything to find Sam, he only had to love him to get him back.

 **Chapter seven**

Dean woke the next morning to the sound of his brother’s gentle, slow breaths. He was wrapped around Sam with one hand laying over his chest, and his head snuggled (well, not snuggled because Dean didn’t do snuggling, rather the more manly version of snuggling although he couldn’t quite remember the right word to describe it) into his brother’s rather broad shoulders. He felt warm, relaxed and happy. Somewhere at the back of his mind he knew that he should be panicking right about now, worrying about what he, they, had done, but there was a blindingly overwhelming sense of wish fulfilment about his mood this morning and he didn’t want anything to sully his perfect contentment.

He moved his head back to look at Sam’s face – quiet and peaceful in his slumber – to simply enjoy having Sam back. Everything that was wrong about being on his own, had been put back to rights. The other half of himself had returned and healed all the empty, achy wounds that separation caused him.

And what is more, the heavy pit of guilt, worry, and disgust with himself that he had carried around with him ever since he had first laid eyes on his brother in a... well... in that way... was gone. He knew he ought to care about what Bobby, or Cas would think but he decided to put that off for another moment or another day. He had found out that he could have everything he wanted – his brother, his family, his partner and now his lover in this weird life they led.

When they had finally returned to the motel room, with Sam, still a little sluggish and dazed from his extended visit to the Underworld, they disappeaedr into each other, only aware of each other’s touch, each other’s sound, each other’s heat, each other’s taste. It had been slow and sweet and gorgeous. Dean had never felt so connected to anyone in his life, nor so laid open, or so completely unselfconscious. All he knew for the several hours after was this – Sam and Dean, and Dean and Sam alone.

After, as both their breaths and heart beats slowed, Sam had fallen asleep with their limbs tangled together.

“Soul mates,” Dean whispered to himself, now accepting what he had fought so hard against ever since Ash’s careless and throw away comment about Sam and Dean’s shared heaven.

Dean watched Sam as the shaft of bright light from a gap in the curtains finally crossed Sam’s face lighting it up like halo. In his sleep, his baby brother looked angelic and so very young...

And then Dean realised it was time to reassert some Deanness into his thought processes before his dick dropped off and he grew a pair of breasts. He prodded his brother hard with his finger.

“Wake up, Sunshine!”

Momentarily disorientated, Sam gasped awake and tried to sit up, but a hand, not his, and already resting on his chest over his heart, simply pressured him down onto his back again.

“Stop fidgeting...”

Sam’s eyes widened and his breathing stopped as he turned to look at his companion.

“Dean?” he called in a rough, sleep soiled voice.

“The one and only,” replied his brother grinning devilishly . He watched several expressions cross Sam’s face all at once with great amusement.

“Oh God!”

Sam pulled himself forcibly away from his brother’s prone, and “Oh God!” naked body. He scrambled so fast out of bed he got knotted up in the comforter, dragging it behind him as he scuttled to the far side of the room, leaving the sunlight shining across the smooth toned muscles of his older brother. Dean looked down at the expanse of his skin then back up to Sam with a suggestive raised eyebrow.

“Oh God!” Sam simply stared back aghast or perhaps overcome with his magnificence. Dean preferred the latter.

Dean slowly raised his upper body learning on one bent arm, and stared at his brother.

“Funny,” he said, “I was going to lay a bet that it would be me freaking out this morning.”

Sam’s jaw dropped and closed several times without a sound. Dean waited patiently.

“You’re.... we....um.... did we....? how... ?” he finally said incoherently. “Dean?”

“It’s OK, Sammy.” Dean responded gently but with laughter lurking behind his eyes. “Isn’t this what you always wanted?”

Sam’s gaze back at Dean was now very intent, very intent indeed, eyes, dark, boring straight into Dean’s own.

“You’re not mad?”

Dean frowned at that – and blamed himself – but shook his head all the same. Sam’s fear was palpable and his big brother instincts were kicking in. He rose from the bed and planted himself firmly in front of Sam, hands on the top of his brother’s arms, thumbs moving in a reassuring way.

“No, not mad. It’s what I wanted, remember?” Dean watched as Sam shook off the last vestiges of the Underworld and his eyes cleared with dawning understanding.

“Oh!” he said simply.

Dean stood very still and quiet, a little fear that perhaps he had gotten it all wrong creeping in through the silence. Had he had taken advantage of Sam whilst he was still in that lethargic fug induced by that place. Maybe all Sam needed was some brotherly affection, maybe it was just him, colouring his own interpretation of Sam’s actions with his own dirty desires, maybe... he started to inch back away dropping his arms to his side, eyes falling to the floor.

“Oh!” Sam said again. After a few minutes, Dean felt a large hand lift his chin up.

“Oh!” said Dean, making no mistake in interpreting the burning passion he saw now in Sam’s eyes, as they raked up and down his naked body and feeling confidence return.

“This is what we both want?” Sam asked very carefully, a little unsure hitch in his voice.

“Yes, Sam,” answered Dean.

“Finally.”

Dean started to smile again and so did Sam as he leant down to kiss his brother again.

“Dean!” he said against his brother’s lips, “You’re... “

“Awesome?” Dean finished for him as they separated a little. “Adorable? Handsome?”

“...such a dope!”

Dean denied it until the day he died, but there were tears in his eyes as he laid his hand back over his brother’s heart and said, very sincerely, and very clearly “I love you, Sam...”, then brushed that ridiculously long fringe back of Sam’s face.

“I know.” Sam smiled. “You are such a girl, Dean...” and he pushed his brother back onto the bed.

***

Later that day, following a phone call to the Moorfields Institute, Dean met with Susan Gallagher outside a club on Main Street that surely wasn’t there in the daytime. He explained quietly for a few minutes, then led her down the stairs. He didn’t go all the way in with her, just to end of the corridor, but he watched as she disappeared into the shadows. He huffed in satisfaction then turned to go.

Sam had been waiting outside, reluctant to go anywhere near the Underworld, but now he was standing at the door. Light, blue and pink, flashing across a face, jaw and fists clenched and obviously determined. He brushed past his brother, then he squared up against the hosts.

“I’ll have Dean’s stuff back now,” he declared stoutly. They seemed shocked and were inclined to be resistant, but the brilliance of the amulet held firmly in Sam’s left hand fist, and now casting a bright glow throughout that shadowy corridor, undermined their arguments.

Dean wasn’t surprised when he saw his brother dangling the keys of the Impala in his hand with a victorious grin on his face. Sam was an irresistible force when he wanted to be... no, scratch that, he was an irresistible force always.

He was surprised though when Sam placed the amulet in his hand. Sam hadn’t returned it after they had left the Underworld the previous night. Dean hadn’t said anything. He’d already given it up. It was warm and heavy for such a little thing. Sam just stood there, as if waiting... Dean looked at it for a while then back up at his brother.

“Dean, after you left… after you had thrown it away… I picked it up… I couldn’t leave it there,” Sam started.

“No! Really?” Dean snarked gaining a brief bitch face in return. He laughed out loud.

“I thought... I hoped you would want it back,” Sam didn’t stutter now, he didn’t look nervous, as Dean finally gave him the chance to say what he had been wanting to all along, probably ever since his hands had hooked up the leather thong and lifted it out of the bin.

But he was surprised when Dean didn’t do what he expected. Instead, his brother reached up to slip the leather over his overly long hair and then around round his neck. The amulet lay just over Sam’s heart, and Dean hummed in satisfaction again. Sam’s smile was meltingly beautiful.

“Come on, let’s get out of this shit hole...” Dean said.

***

He pretended not to see Ishtar lurking in the darkness on the opposite of the road. He ought to gank her, but he felt a little sorry for her. She looked so miserable as she watched the two of them make their way back up towards the Motel and the Impala.

He suddenly felt the vibrations of his cell phone in his pocket.

“Bobby!”

“Hey, Dean,” he heard the old man say. “How’s that brother of yours?”

And Dean laughed, gazing up at his giant lump of a brother with what he knew was adoration but would claim was nothing more than annoyance if and when he was challenged on it.

“He’s good, Bobby. We’re both good."

fin

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: The myth of Ishtar, a sort of combined Kali and Aphrodite, is real and is told in the epic story of Gilgamesh (and in other sources). Unfortunately, I think she suffered from the rise of patriarchal religions and her reputation was ruined. I’m positive that she was never quite the man-eater as the stories say but our male ancestors couldn’t let her compete with their all new and shiny male gods. I suffer pangs of guilt in making her old and bitter and a little clueless but it fit my purposes for this story. Anyhow, I’m glad Dean let her live and I hope she is still out there teaching oblivious idiots lessons they need to learn.
> 
> Sam, of course, is the ‘lion mighty’. In that sense he is infused into the whole story. However, he actually only really appears at the end. I apologise to him for side lining him for so long. I am fascinated by the inner workings of Dean but, as Dean discovers for himself, there is no Dean without Sam, and I hope that mollifies those who missed the younger brother in this fic.


End file.
